Hot Issue Cool Brains

Apparently university administrators are so busy fighting global warming that they can’t take the time to read the Climategate e-mails that show that the science behind the theory is corrupt. At George Washington University, for example, “The Office of Sustainability and Climate Action Plan implementation teams are on schedule to complete the promised road map to make GW carbon neutral by its deadline of May 15, a University administrator said this week,” Michelle Brown reported in the GW Hatchet online on April 8, 2010. “Sophie Waskow, the stakeholder engagement coordinator of the Office of Sustainability, said the plan will be unveiled April 22 at an Earth Day celebration.”

“The Climate Action Plan implementation teams have made significant progress analyzing different strategies for reducing carbon emissions resulting from the University’s energy and transportation activities,” Waskow stated in an e-mail.

Meanwhile, “What emerges from our review of the emails and documents, which span a 13-year period from 1996 through November 2009, is much more than, as EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson put it, scientists who ‘lack interpersonal skills,’” Senator James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works points out.  “Rather, the emails show the world’s leading climate scientists discussing, among other things: “Obstructing the release of damaging data and information;

• “Manipulating data to reach preconceived conclusions;
• “Threatening journal editors who published work questioning the climate science ‘consensus’; and
• “Assuming activist roles to influence the political process.

“The correspondence also reveals a fractured consensus on the state of climate science.  Contrary to repeated assertions that the ‘science is settled,’ the emails show the world’s leading climate scientists arguing over critical issues, questioning key methods and statistical techniques, and doubting whether there is ‘consensus’ on the causes and the extent of climate change.”

Indeed, “The Science Museum is revising the contents of its new climate science gallery to reflect the wave of scepticism that has engulfed the issue in recent months,” Ben Webster reported in The London Times on March 24, 2010. “The decision by the 100-year-old London museum reveals how deeply scientific institutions have been shaken by the public’s reaction to revelations of malpractice by climate scientists.”

“The museum is abandoning its previous practice of trying to persuade visitors of the dangers of global warming. It is instead adopting a neutral position, acknowledging that there are legitimate doubts about the impact of man-made emissions on the climate.”

“Even the title of the £4 million gallery has been changed to reflect the museum’s more circumspect approach. The museum had intended to call it the Climate Change Gallery, but has decided to change this to Climate Science Gallery to avoid being accused of presuming that emissions would change the temperature.”

Webster is the environment editor for The London Times. “It is becoming difficult to keep pace with the speed at which the global warming scam is now unraveling,” Gerald Warner wrote in The London Telegraph on March 25, 2010. “The latest reversal of scientific ‘consensus’ is on livestock and the meat trade as a major cause of global warming—one-fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions, according to eco-vegetarian cranks.”

“Now a scientific report delivered to the American Chemical Society says it is nonsense.” Guess who bought it hook, line and sinker?

Warner reminds us that “The cow-burp hysteria reached a crescendo in 2006 when a United Nations report ominously entitled ‘Livestock’s Long Shadow’ claimed: ‘The livestock sector is a major player, responsible for 18 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalents). This is a higher share than transport.’”

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.