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Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Lord Monckton defends science, calls on Senators to resign

On 11 December, The Viscount of Brenchley, England, Lord Monckton sent an open letter to Senators John D Rockefeller (Democrat-WV) and Olympia Snowe (Republican-Maine) in response to their recent open letter telling the CEO of ExxonMobil to stop funding scientists who are skeptical of the climate change "consensus" promoted by environmentalists and the mainstream media.

You can read his whole letter (please do), including works cited and the executive summary of a University of Southern California research paper here: http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20061212_monckton.pdf

In his letter, Lord Monckton,
former policy adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, does some serious calling-out of our beloved leftist environmentalist Senators. He writes:
You defy every tenet of democracy when you invite ExxonMobil to deny itself the right to provide information to “senior elected and appointed government officials” who disagree with your opinion. You are elected officials yourselves. If you do not believe in the right of persons within the United States to exercise their fundamental right under the world’s greatest Constitution to petition their elected representatives for the redress of their grievances, then you have no place on Capitol Hill. You must go.
Lord Monckton is a long time and well known critic of the global warming / anthropogenic climate change theory. He continues in his letter to criticize the ignorant environmentalists and their even more ignorant followers by not only challenging the climate change assertions that they seem to believe as Gospel [although, Gospel means "good news," and that is something unknown to these types], but also by calling attention to the fact that the withholding and repressing the critical side of the global warming debate is equivalent to violating the first amendment!

These senators and their ilk seem to believe that if they are unable to answer to the critics of their point of view, they can simply call into question the source of their opponents. I'm pretty sure that a lot of good, unbiased science comes out of private firms who are not funded by the government, but apparently that is too hard for some to believe.

And furthermore, why did it take a British nobleman to call out these United States Senators? Are we so jaded and used to the pathetic rambling of our politicians that we no longer care? Or is it that the critics of this so-called consensus on global warming do not have the backbone to defend themselves?

Of course, it could well be that no one knows about the letters in question. Google News only had nine measly references to this story today. Which obviates the fact that the mainstream media does not care to acknowledge that there is even a debate on the topic. Oi.


... Anyways, back to the climate change thing...

The authors of "On Global Forces of Nature Driving the Earth’s Climate: Are Humans Involved?" [which they apparently expect you to pay $30 for here] conclude that:
“The human-induced climatic changes are negligible. … The global warming observed during the latest 150 years is just a short episode in the geologic history. The current global warming is most likely a combined effect of increased solar and tectonic activities and cannot be attributed to the increased anthropogenic impact on the atmosphere. … Humans may be responsible for less than 0.01°C of approximately 0.56°C (1°F) total average atmospheric heating during the last century”.
Which sounds perfectly plausible to me. Even if the current human activity is causing an increase in global temperatures, we have not been able to accurately measure and study it for nearly long enough at this point in time to come to any strong conclusions. I agree with the USC researchers that the natural ebb and flow of global climate is much more powerful than most people give it credit for. As great as the human race seems to be, we probably can't influence the heavens and the Earth as easily as we would like to think.

So poo on you, Mr. Gore.

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