Vice President Al Gore, the self-styled "environmental savior," urges Americans to adopt environmental protection as "the central organizing principle for civilization" ‹ even before the facts on global warming are set straight. "Research in lieu of action is unconscionable," he says. Maybe. But wouldn’t research help us learn what action, if any, is required?
The Administration has made no attempt to provide the public with an honest debate. Al Gore says the scientific debate is over and is fond of reciting that "more than 2,600 scientists" have signed a letter supporting his view of "global climatic disruption." However, this is a lie. The vast majority of the signatories to Mr. Gore’s letter are not scientists they’re lawyers, medical doctors, dentists, landscape architects, a philosopher, and a diplomat. The fact is that 93 percent of the more than 2,600 signatories have no expertise in climate studies.
It appears the unsavory truth was accidentally revealed by Richard Bendick, a Clinton-Gore State Department employee, who said: "A global climate treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the greenhouse effect."
In today’s technologically advanced society, the public is increasingly required to trust in experts. All too often misrepresentation and manipulation and has been the result. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Administrationšs stance on global warming and the Kyoto Protocol.
Enter Stephen Schneider. To the average person Schneider resembles the epitome of a trust-worthy expert: Ph.D. in Plasma Physics from Columbia University, researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and at NASA’s Goddard, and a professorship with Stanford’s Department of Biological Sciences. Clinton and Gore thought so highly of Schneider’s expertise that he was invited to a White House meeting of leading scientists to explore climate change policy.
However, on global warming, Schneider freely admits he casts scientific caution aside and ignores the evidence. He said, "Looking at every bump and wiggle of the record is a waste of time. So, I don’t set very much store by looking at the direct evidence." Looking at the direct evidence is a waste of time? A stunning mindset for a scientist!
Perhaps this explains why only two decades ago Schneider was not sounding the alarm on warming, but warned of an impending Ice Age. Simply stated the man who today gives panicked warnings about global warming, was at the forefront of the global cooling hysteria in the 1970s. He published a book entitled "The Genesis Strategy," warning of the coming glaciation. He wrote a testimonial for Lowell Ponte’s "The Cooling." Schneider also co-authored a paper on carbon dioxide and aerosols in which he argued that the impact of aerosols "is to reduce the surface temperature of Earth. [I]f sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease over the whole globe is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age."
Not only did Schneider warn of an impeding Ice Age, he harshly criticized the then-budding warming theory. In 1971, he wrote, "Temperatures do not increase in proportion to an atmospheric increase in CO2. Even an eight-fold increase might warm the earth’s surface less than two degrees Centigrade, and this is highly unlikely in the next several thousand years." In two decades, Schneider went from hysterical warnings of an impeding ice age to hysterical warnings of global warming all the while paying little heed to the "direct evidence."
The commotion and hysteria of global warming is nothing new. Those with a political agenda concoct an emergency and propose new government regulations and higher taxes as the solution. We are asked to pay the price for their "solution" in lost jobs and higher costs for everything from groceries to fuel to housing. They assure us the heavy price will be worth it if we can avoid the contrived disaster.
Beware! Amidst the Administration’s warnings of imminent doom, we must keep one eye focused on the facts and remember that many of the same "experts" that now preach the horrors of global warming, not long ago warned of a new ice age. They can’t have it both ways.