Earmark Reform, Murtha Style!
May 18, 2007
Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) threatened to deny any further spending projects to a Republican who challenged him over an earmark last week, a violation of House rules.
According to the draft resolution, Murtha shouted at and chastised Rogers on the House floor Thursday for offering a motion last week to challenge $23 million Murtha requested in an intelligence bill.
Murtha had requested the money to prevent the administration from shuttering the National Drug Intelligence Center in Johnstown, Pa., which is part of Murtha’s district.
“I hope you don’t have any earmarks in the defense appropriations bills because they are gone, and you will not get any earmarks now and forever,” Murtha told Rogers, according to the draft transcript given to The Politico.
“This is not the way we do things here – and is that supposed to make me afraid of you?” Rogers replied.
“That’s the way I do it,” Murtha said.
What ever happened to earmark reform??
Democrat Corruption
May 15, 2007
The Democratic Party is corrupt from top to bottom. It is how they do business – it isn’t just the odd elected Democrat who is corrupt (as is the case in the GOP), but the whole Party ethic which lives on corruption. If you wonder why a Pelosi-led Congress is unwilling to go after corruption then you need look no further than the fact that Nancy Pelosi used illegal campaign funds to buy her way into the top slot among House Democrats.
Democrats… Culture of Corruption!!!
May 8, 2007
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi included a provision in a water redevelopment bill that will benefit property her husband owns in San Francisco.
“She should explain to the American people what the earmark is all about and convince people there’s no financial benefit to her,” he said.
John Hart, a spokesman for Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said that “on its face it appears to be a conflict of interest.”
Pelosi’s project was part of the $15 billion Water Resources Development Act.
Her investor husband gets rental income from four buildings in a nearby commercial district.
More Lard from Demotards
March 21, 2007
Help stop $21 billion of pork-barrel spending in the proposed emergency supplemental appropriations bill by telling your U.S. Representative and Senators to sign CCAGW’s Emergency Supplemental No Pork Pledge today! President Bush’s request for $103 billion to fund the Global War on Terror and hurricane relief efforts has ballooned into a $124 billion measure stuffed full of pork! Much of the additional $21 billion is aimed at projects that have nothing to do with the War or hurricane relief, such $283 million for the Milk Income Loss Contract program, $74 million for peanut storage costs, $60.4 million for salmon fisheries, $50 million for asbestos mitigation at the U.S. Capitol Plant, and $25 million for spinach growers.
Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars should be used only for projects or provisions that are directly related to the emergency supplemental requested by the President that provides funds for our soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq and hurricane relief.”
Sekula-Gibbs for Congress, TX-22nd
February 21, 2007
Congressional District 22 has inadequate representation in Washington. Nick Lampson, a Nancy Pelosi liberal, votes with the cut-and-run Democrats and against his constituents, who live in one of America’s most conservative districts. Your conservative voice is being squashed by a liberal agenda set in San Francisco, not Fort Bend, Harris, and Galveston counties.
I want to bring Republican representation back to District 22. You deserve a representative in Congress who shares your values, and goals.
Gore Ducks Blizzard
February 15, 2007
Reprinted from NewsMax.com
Analysis: Al Gore Ducks Northeast Blizzard
Phil Brennan
Thursday, Feb. 15, 2007
As a blizzard of snow and ice pummels the Northeast after trouncing the Midwest, and waves of Arctic cold fronts drop much of America below sub freezing weather, the $64,000 question is, Where is Al Gore?
Gore claims that global warming is an immediate problem facing the United States and the world, and places like New York and Chicago could feel like Caribbean haunts.
If there is any doubt that God has a sense of humor, it has to be dispelled by a headline in Wednesday’s Drudge Report: “House hearing on ‘warming of the planet’ canceled after ice storm.”
He followed up with this: “Save it for a sunny day: Maryville Univ. in St. Louis area canceling screening of Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’ because of a snowstorm.”
What must have evoked the loudest laugh in heaven is the notion that if global warming is really occurring, puny mankind is going to overcome it by legislation and business regulation that would strangle the U.S. economy and be overseen by the super efficient United Nations.
In a NewsMax.com column, I made a prediction that was greeted with scorn by the promoters of the global warming theory. One even called me “evil.”
Here’s what I wrote: “Within the next 24 months, some areas of the U.S. will have 20 feet of snow falling in just one storm.” This was around the time parts of Japan got hit by a 13-foot snowfall.
Last month Colorado had about 20 feet of snow fall in little more than a week’s time. Now areas of northern New York State are reeling under more than 12 feet of snow.
Picture a person 6 feet tall with 6 feet of snow above the top of his head, and you’ll get an idea of what a dozen feet of snow amounts to.
My prediction was based on a very simple fact. Over the past two years, areas of the United States, including New England, had twice experienced rainfall of 20 inches in a single storm.
If 20 inches of precipitation fell as snow, it would total 20 feet.
And there are solid reasons why an area that got hit with 20 inches of rain in the summer and fall would be a prime candidate to experience 20 feet of snow in the winter, especially if levels of precipitation are rising.
And precipitation levels are rising — for a very good reason.
The world’s oceans are being heated by underwater tectonic activity — underwater volcanic eruptions and blisteringly hot magma seeping up from cracks in the sea floor.
The heated ocean water creates high levels of CO2 that it sends aloft along with huge amounts of moisture. That moisture becomes precipitation — rain in the spring, summer, and fall, and snow in the winter. Increased amounts of moisture in the upper atmosphere equals increased amounts of precipitation.
The hotter the oceans, the more water vapor sent heavenward and the heavier the precipitation. This explains the large number of record-breaking rainfalls we’ve been seeing in the past couple of years — with as noted above, areas of the United States getting 20 inches of rain in a day or so.
As for that dreaded greenhouse gas, CO2, atmospheric levels of which now exceed 400 parts per million (ppm), it is important to note that paleological records show that every time CO2 levels have exceeded 300 ppm there has been an ice age. Every time — without exception.
The same records show that there have been a series of ice ages over the past 5 million years, naturally occurring every 100,000 years, with about 90,000 years of glaciation followed by about 12,000 years of interglacial climate.
The last ice age ended about 12,000 years ago. Clearly we are in line for the next period of glaciation. But more about that later.
Suffice it to say that unless Al Gore has managed to repeal a demonstrated law of nature, the iceman cometh.
The befuddled Gore keeps blathering about how the oceans are being heated by global warming, instead of the warming being created by the oceans, as the facts clearly show.
On his Web site iceagenow.com, Robert W. Felix provides the following information about ocean warming as a result of hydrothermic activity under the seas.
“‘Dubbed “petit spots,” these new types of volcanoes are difficult to spot using satellite technology. Specific geophysical and sampling expeditions would have to be carried out in order to locate them,’ Hirano explained.”
Hydrothermal hot springs on the seafloor were also far more abundant than predicted. “We expected this to be a hydrothermally dead ridge, and almost every time our water measurement instrument came up, they showed evidence of hydrothermal activity, and once we even ’saw’ an active hot spring on the sea floor,” said Dr. Jonathan Snow, the leader of the research group from the Max Planck Institute.
Remember, that “magmatism” is red hot magma seeping up from the ocean floor. It’s like putting a burner under a pot of water.
In short, heated oceans are warming the globe and setting up a scenario that includes among its consequences more and increasingly violent hurricanes, tornadoes, and blizzards.
In 1979, Genevieve Woillard, a pollen specialist in France, concluded from detailed studies that the shift from a warm, interglacial climate to ice age conditions at the beginning of the last ice age, some 100,000 years ago, took “less than 20 years.” Her observations of the decline of European forests led her to conclude we may be in a similar period of rapid climatic change.
Research has shown that this 20-year period is one in which Mother Nature wreaks havoc on humanity.
If the unchallenged results of the work of Woillard and others who studied past ice ages are any indication of the pace of glaciation, once it starts, the transition period is a mere 20 years or so. And we may be well into that 20-year period now. Woillard estimated that the period before that final 20 years — when the earth began gearing up for an end to the interglacial period — could be as long as 150 years and as short as 75 years.”
According to Woillard’s studies and those of other paleological climate researchers, the transition between interglacial and glacial periods is one of increasing violence — more volcanic eruptions, storms, earthquakes, and other natural disasters.
We are being bombarded with horror stories about how the arctic regions are warming and the polar bears are disappearing (actually their number numbers have increased by some 20,000) but we are not informed by Mr. Gore and his acolytes as to how a warming arctic region can continue to send more and more record breaking cold waves southward, creating the incredibly frigid weather much of the northern U.S. is shivering under.
If your refrigerator is running low on freon it will not keep its contents cold. If the arctic is our refrigerator, and the refrigerator is rapidly running out of coolant, how can it create colder and colder weather fronts?
The mechanics here are simple. The earth is getting warmer in some areas thanks to the heat being given off by the seas – picture standing next to a pot of boiling water – you’ll feel the heat. Stand next to a heated ocean and you’ll feel the warmth. That melting ice in part of the arctic regions is probably the result of hydrothermal activity in the Gakkel Ridge under the Arctic Ocean.
When that warm air coming north from the tropics meets the frigid air coming south from the pole, it creates violence. And the hotter the air from the south and the colder the air from the north, the more violent the collision will be. Tornadoes, violent storms, and blizzards are some of the results.
This process feeds on itself. As the amount of atmospheric moisture increases more precipitation is sent poleward, resulting in more snowfall to build heavier and heavier polar ice packs which fail to decrease in summertime because the cloud cover created by the moisture-laden air transported from the tropics prevents any thawing.
As the ice packs grow deeper and heavier, more magma is squeezed out and sent toward the equators, creating more volcanic activity, which spews more and more volcanic ash into the upper atmosphere, along with enormous quantities of greenhouse gasses. This results in greater and greater amounts of moisture-laden clouds being sent poleward. And so on.
As the glaciation process continues, winters will get longer and longer; that’s colder air reaches farther and farther toward the equator. Summers will get shorter and shorter, and growing seasons will slowly vanish.
Areas previously blessed with temperate climates are transformed into subarctic regions, and the subtropics turn colder and colder.
And all this can happen in a matter of a very few years. So few, that the world may very well learn that the interglacial period has been replaced by the glaciation process before the end of the next decade — or even earlier.
On his Web site, Bob Felix cites facts ignored or lied about by the global warming alarmists. He shows that despite their claims that the worlds glaciers are melting, fully 75 percent are actually growing.
In response to claims that oceans levels are rising and threatening to drown New York City, he shows they are actually falling.
Finally, what mankind faces now is not glaciation burying cities under miles of ice – that’s tens of thousands of years away. In our immediate future is the beginning of the process which starts with a bang – that 20-year interim period I think the record shows we are now experiencing. The effects will be more or less immediate, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. If I’m correct in all of this, we’ll know it over the next couple of years.
As for the current media fed hysteria, let me finish with this: Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, told the publication “Hospodárské noviny,” a Czech economics daily, that “Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution; it’s a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor.”
“Other top-level politicians do not express their global warming doubts because a whip of political correctness strangles their voice.”
© NewsMax 2007. All rights reserved.
Global Warming Scam
February 12, 2007
From
February 11, 2007
An experiment that hints we are wrong on climate change
Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist, says the orthodoxy must be challenged
When politicians and journalists declare that the science of global warming is settled, they show a regrettable ignorance about how science works. We were treated to another dose of it recently when the experts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued the Summary for Policymakers that puts the political spin on an unfinished scientific dossier on climate change due for publication in a few months’ time. They declared that most of the rise in temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to man-made greenhouse gases.
The small print explains “very likely” as meaning that the experts who made the judgment felt 90% sure about it. Older readers may recall a press conference at Harwell in 1958 when Sir John Cockcroft, Britain’s top nuclear physicist, said he was 90% certain that his lads had achieved controlled nuclear fusion. It turned out that he was wrong. More positively, a 10% uncertainty in any theory is a wide open breach for any latterday Galileo or Einstein to storm through with a better idea. That is how science really works.
Twenty years ago, climate research became politicised in favour of one particular hypothesis, which redefined the subject as the study of the effect of greenhouse gases. As a result, the rebellious spirits essential for innovative and trustworthy science are greeted with impediments to their research careers. And while the media usually find mavericks at least entertaining, in this case they often imagine that anyone who doubts the hypothesis of man-made global warming must be in the pay of the oil companies. As a result, some key discoveries in climate research go almost unreported.
Enthusiasm for the global-warming scare also ensures that heatwaves make headlines, while contrary symptoms, such as this winter’s billion-dollar loss of Californian crops to unusual frost, are relegated to the business pages. The early arrival of migrant birds in spring provides colourful evidence for a recent warming of the northern lands. But did anyone tell you that in east Antarctica the Adélie penguins and Cape petrels are turning up at their spring nesting sites around nine days later than they did 50 years ago? While sea-ice has diminished in the Arctic since 1978, it has grown by 8% in the Southern Ocean.
So one awkward question you can ask, when you’re forking out those extra taxes for climate change, is “Why is east Antarctica getting colder?” It makes no sense at all if carbon dioxide is driving global warming. While you’re at it, you might inquire whether Gordon Brown will give you a refund if it’s confirmed that global warming has stopped. The best measurements of global air temperatures come from American weather satellites, and they show wobbles but no overall change since 1999.
That levelling off is just what is expected by the chief rival hypothesis, which says that the sun drives climate changes more emphatically than greenhouse gases do. After becoming much more active during the 20th century, the sun now stands at a high but roughly level state of activity. Solar physicists warn of possible global cooling, should the sun revert to the lazier mood it was in during the Little Ice Age 300 years ago.
Climate history and related archeology give solid support to the solar hypothesis. The 20th-century episode, or Modern Warming, was just the latest in a long string of similar events produced by a hyperactive sun, of which the last was the Medieval Warming.
The Chinese population doubled then, while in Europe the Vikings and cathedral-builders prospered. Fascinating relics of earlier episodes come from the Swiss Alps, with the rediscovery in 2003 of a long-forgotten pass used intermittently whenever the world was warm.
What does the Intergovernmental Panel do with such emphatic evidence for an alternation of warm and cold periods, linked to solar activity and going on long before human industry was a possible factor? Less than nothing. The 2007 Summary for Policymakers boasts of cutting in half a very small contribution by the sun to climate change conceded in a 2001 report.
Disdain for the sun goes with a failure by the self-appointed greenhouse experts to keep up with inconvenient discoveries about how the solar variations control the climate. The sun’s brightness may change too little to account for the big swings in the climate. But more than 10 years have passed since Henrik Svensmark in Copenhagen first pointed out a much more powerful mechanism.
He saw from compilations of weather satellite data that cloudiness varies according to how many atomic particles are coming in from exploded stars. More cosmic rays, more clouds. The sun’s magnetic field bats away many of the cosmic rays, and its intensification during the 20th century meant fewer cosmic rays, fewer clouds, and a warmer world. On the other hand the Little Ice Age was chilly because the lazy sun let in more cosmic rays, leaving the world cloudier and gloomier.
The only trouble with Svensmark’s idea — apart from its being politically incorrect — was that meteorologists denied that cosmic rays could be involved in cloud formation. After long delays in scraping together the funds for an experiment, Svensmark and his small team at the Danish National Space Center hit the jackpot in the summer of 2005.
In a box of air in the basement, they were able to show that electrons set free by cosmic rays coming through the ceiling stitched together droplets of sulphuric acid and water. These are the building blocks for cloud condensation. But journal after journal declined to publish their report; the discovery finally appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society late last year.
Thanks to having written The Manic Sun, a book about Svensmark’s initial discovery published in 1997, I have been privileged to be on the inside track for reporting his struggles and successes since then. The outcome is a second book, The Chilling Stars, co-authored by the two of us and published next week by Icon books. We are not exaggerating, we believe, when we subtitle it “A new theory of climate change”.
Where does all that leave the impact of greenhouse gases? Their effects are likely to be a good deal less than advertised, but nobody can really say until the implications of the new theory of climate change are more fully worked out.
The reappraisal starts with Antarctica, where those contradictory temperature trends are directly predicted by Svensmark’s scenario, because the snow there is whiter than the cloud-tops. Meanwhile humility in face of Nature’s marvels seems more appropriate than arrogant assertions that we can forecast and even control a climate ruled by the sun and the stars.
Donks to Raise Taxes
February 7, 2007
SEC. 405. PAY-AS-YOU-GO POINT OF ORDER.
- Rule XXI is amended by adding at the end the following new clause:
- `10. It shall not be in order to consider any bill, joint resolution, amendment, or conference report if the provisions of such measure affecting direct spending and revenues have the net effect of increasing the deficit or reducing the surplus for either the period comprising the current fiscal year and the five fiscal years beginning with the fiscal year that ends in the following calendar year or the period comprising the current fiscal year and the ten fiscal years beginning with the fiscal year that ends in the following calendar year. The effect of such measure on the deficit or surplus shall be determined on the basis of estimates made by the Committee on the Budget relative to–
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- `(a) the most recent baseline estimates supplied by the Congressional Budget Office consistent with section 257 of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 used in considering a concurrent resolution on the budget; or
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- `(b) after the beginning of a new calendar year and before consideration of a concurrent resolution on the budget, the most recent baseline estimates supplied by the Congressional Budget Office consistent with section 257 of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985.’.
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- What happens when spending outpaces revenues?
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- Raise Revenue (TAXES)!!!
House Donks Increase Dependence on Foreign Oil
February 7, 2007
A BILL
To reduce our Nation’s dependency on foreign oil by investing in clean, renewable, and alternative energy resources, promoting new emerging energy technologies, developing greater efficiency, and creating a Strategic Energy Efficiency and Renewables Reserve to invest in alternative energy, and for other purposes.
but,
(1) IN GENERAL- The Secretary shall not issue any new lease that authorizes the production of oil or natural gas in the Gulf of Mexico under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (43 U.S.C. 1331 et seq.) to a person described in paragraph (2) unless–
(A) the person has renegotiated each covered lease with respect to which the person is a lessee, to modify the payment responsibilities of the person to include price thresholds that are equal to or less than the price thresholds described in clauses (v) through (vii) of section 8(a)(3)(C) of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (43 U.S.C. 1337(a)(3)(C));
Reduce dependence on foreign oil, by forcing US oil companies to renegotiate leases, and,
PRODUCING LEASE FEE TERMS- The fee under paragraph (1)(A)–
(A) subject to subparagraph (C), shall apply to covered leases that are producing leases;
(B) shall be set at $9 per barrel for oil and $1.25 per million Btu for gas, respectively, in 2005 dollars.
imposing a $9 a barrel fee (TAX) on every barrel of oil collected in the Gulf of Mexico!!
US dependence on foreign oil will increase not decrease.
That’s why we call ‘em Dummocrats.
The Global Warming Scam
February 6, 2007
Global Warming: The Cold, Hard Facts?
Monday, February 5, 2007
Global Warming, as we think we know it, doesn’t exist. And I am not the only one trying to make people open up their eyes and see the truth. But few listen, despite the fact that I was the first Canadian Ph.D. in Climatology and I have an extensive background in climatology, especially the reconstruction of past climates and the impact of climate change on human history and the human condition. Few listen, even though I have a Ph.D, (Doctor of Science) from the University of London, England and was a climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. For some reason (actually for many), the World is not listening. Here is why.
What would happen if tomorrow we were told that, after all, the Earth is flat? It would probably be the most important piece of news in the media and would generate a lot of debate. So why is it that when scientists who have studied the Global Warming phenomenon for years say that humans are not the cause nobody listens? Why does no one acknowledge that the Emperor has no clothes on?
Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification. For example, Environment Canada brags about spending $3.7 billion in the last five years dealing with climate change almost all on propaganda trying to defend an indefensible scientific position while at the same time closing weather stations and failing to meet legislated pollution targets.
No sensible person seeks conflict, especially with governments, but if we don’t pursue the truth, we are lost as individuals and as a society. That is why I insist on saying that there is no evidence that we are, or could ever cause global climate change. And, recently, Yuri A. Izrael, Vice President of the United Nations sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed this statement. So how has the world come to believe that something is wrong?
Maybe for the same reason we believed, 30 years ago, that global cooling was the biggest threat: a matter of faith. “It is a cold fact: the Global Cooling presents humankind with the most important social, political, and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for ten thousand years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is of ultimate importance; the survival of ourselves, our children, our species,” wrote Lowell Ponte in 1976.
I was as opposed to the threats of impending doom global cooling engendered as I am to the threats made about Global Warming. Let me stress I am not denying the phenomenon has occurred. The world has warmed since 1680, the nadir of a cool period called the Little Ice Age (LIA) that has generally continued to the present. These climate changes are well within natural variability and explained quite easily by changes in the sun. But there is nothing unusual going on.
Since I obtained my doctorate in climatology from the University of London, Queen Mary College, England my career has spanned two climate cycles. Temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980 and in the early 1970’s global cooling became the consensus. This proves that consensus is not a scientific fact. By the 1990’s temperatures appeared to have reversed and Global Warming became the consensus. It appears I’ll witness another cycle before retiring, as the major mechanisms and the global temperature trends now indicate a cooling.
No doubt passive acceptance yields less stress, fewer personal attacks and makes career progress easier. What I have experienced in my personal life during the last years makes me understand why most people choose not to speak out; job security and fear of reprisals. Even in University, where free speech and challenge to prevailing wisdoms are supposedly encouraged, academics remain silent.
I once received a three page letter that my lawyer defined as libellous, from an academic colleague, saying I had no right to say what I was saying, especially in public lectures. Sadly, my experience is that universities are the most dogmatic and oppressive places in our society. This becomes progressively worse as they receive more and more funding from governments that demand a particular viewpoint.
In another instance, I was accused by Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki of being paid by oil companies. That is a lie. Apparently he thinks if the fossil fuel companies pay you have an agenda. So if Greenpeace, Sierra Club or governments pay there is no agenda and only truth and enlightenment?
Personal attacks are difficult and shouldn’t occur in a debate in a civilized society. I can only consider them from what they imply. They usually indicate a person or group is losing the debate. In this case, they also indicate how political the entire Global Warming debate has become. Both underline the lack of or even contradictory nature of the evidence.
I am not alone in this journey against the prevalent myth. Several well-known names have also raised their voices. Michael Crichton, the scientist, writer and filmmaker is one of them. In his latest book, “State of Fear” he takes time to explain, often in surprising detail, the flawed science behind Global Warming and other imagined environmental crises.
Another cry in the wildenerness is Richard Lindzen’s. He is an atmospheric physicist and a professor of meteorology at MIT, renowned for his research in dynamic meteorology – especially atmospheric waves. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has held positions at the University of Chicago, Harvard University and MIT. Linzen frequently speaks out against the notion that significant Global Warming is caused by humans. Yet nobody seems to listen.
I think it may be because most people don’t understand the scientific method which Thomas Kuhn so skilfully and briefly set out in his book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” A scientist makes certain assumptions and then produces a theory which is only as valid as the assumptions. The theory of Global Warming assumes that CO2 is an atmospheric greenhouse gas and as it increases temperatures rise. It was then theorized that since humans were producing more CO2 than before, the temperature would inevitably rise. The theory was accepted before testing had started, and effectively became a law.
As Lindzen said many years ago: “the consensus was reached before the research had even begun.” Now, any scientist who dares to question the prevailing wisdom is marginalized and called a sceptic, when in fact they are simply being good scientists. This has reached frightening levels with these scientists now being called climate change denier with all the holocaust connotations of that word. The normal scientific method is effectively being thwarted.
Meanwhile, politicians are being listened to, even though most of them have no knowledge or understanding of science, especially the science of climate and climate change. Hence, they are in no position to question a policy on climate change when it threatens the entire planet. Moreover, using fear and creating hysteria makes it very difficult to make calm rational decisions about issues needing attention.
Until you have challenged the prevailing wisdom you have no idea how nasty people can be. Until you have re-examined any issue in an attempt to find out all the information, you cannot know how much misinformation exists in the supposed age of information.
I was greatly influenced several years ago by Aaron Wildavsky’s book “Yes, but is it true?” The author taught political science at a New York University and realized how science was being influenced by and apparently misused by politics. He gave his graduate students an assignment to pursue the science behind a policy generated by a highly publicised environmental concern. To his and their surprise they found there was little scientific evidence, consensus and justification for the policy. You only realize the extent to which Wildavsky’s findings occur when you ask the question he posed. Wildavsky’s students did it in the safety of academia and with the excuse that it was an assignment. I have learned it is a difficult question to ask in the real world, however I firmly believe it is the most important question to ask if we are to advance in the right direction.
