Don’t believe all the hot air on consensus

What to make of Al Gore’s consensus claims

One of the greatest misrepresentations in the media today is that there is consensus on the issue of global warming. Many credible scientists today question the validity of that supposed consensus on what is responsible for the gradual increase in the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere. Below is one such article we found, by Richard S. Lindzen, which appeared in Wall Street Journal. It must be noted, Mr. Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT.

• Alpine glaciers have been retreating since the early 19th century, and were advancing for several centuries before that.
• When Newsweek featured global warming in a 1988 issue, it was claimed that all scientists agreed.
• Mr. Gore's preferred global-warming template is “shrill alarmism.”
• Malaria, claimed to be a byproduct of global warming, was once common in Michigan and Siberia – and remains common in Siberia. Mosquitoes don't require tropical warmth.
• Given the extent to which we do not understand the natural internal variability of climate change, the effort to calculate human contribution to that change is quixotic at best – and terribly vulnerable to politicization.
• The National Academy of Sciences issued a brief (15-page) report responding to questions from the White House. This report ambiguously claimed that "The changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes is also a reflection of natural variability."
• Non-scientists generally do not want to bother with understanding the science. Claims of consensus relieve policy types, environmental advocates and politicians of the considerable effort needed to do so. It also leaves them freer to ignore the weaknesses in their theories.
• There is a clear attempt by global warming advocates to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition and political bullying.

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Don't Believe The Hype
By Richard S. Lindzen

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Our Take

We need to hear dissenting voices on what is clearly becoming a politically driven, media circus when it comes to the charged atmosphere (pun intended) surrounding global warming. It is easy for the media to buy into the consensus theory because it requires work to do otherwise and who in the media has shown they want to do that? This is not a surprising drop of the ball by the media. However, we need to hear those voices that assert there is room for the contrarian point of view – that is not under the so-called fold of scientific consensus. It may be that the real cause of the smog surrounding our Earth is the mass media itself!