The video ” The Great Global Warming Swindle” is back up on You-Tube. You can view it at this Link. The video presents a very good scientific rebuttal to most of the arguments of global warming proponents.
I’ve also attached an article by Steven Hayward of the Pacific Research Institute. The article is dated 2006, but was actually written just a few days ago about Al Gore’s appearance before Congress on March 21, 2007.
The article cites Kevin Vranes, a global warming proponent from the U of Colorado as saying:
“To sum the state of the climate science world in one word, as I see it right now, it is this: tension. What I am starting to hear is internal backlash. . . None of this is to say that the risk of climate change is being questioned or downplayed by our community; it’s not. It is to say that I think some people feel that we’ve created a monster by limiting the ability of people in our community to question results that say ‘climate change is right here!”
Tom: It seems that you often engage in what would be called “cherry-picking” of sources, and don’t extend the same skepticism of your sources beyond those who take Gore’s position.
Example: In this post you cite “an article by Steven Hayward of the Pacific Research Institute.”
But if you go to the “about” link at that institute’s web site, you find this:
“The mission of the Pacific Research Institute (PRI) is to champion freedom, opportunity, and personal responsibility for all individuals by advancing free-market policy solutions.”
http://www.pacificresearch.org/about/index.html
They also have a header on many of their web site pages that claims, “The Pacific Research Institute (PRI) is a free-market think tank providing practical solutions for the issues that impact the daily lives of all individuals.”
When English instructors teach a basic composition 101 course, they usually urge their students to “consider the source” and seek to determine if the source has any bias.
The Pacific Research Institute has a mission, and they will only publish articles that support their mission, which relates to liberty and free enterprise.
Say that only 55% of all scientists studying global warming are concerned about unprecedented rising CO2 rates, rising temperatures, melting ice caps and glaciers, and other phenomena (it could be higher, but say this is the case for the sake of this example). Say that 30% disagree with the majority (it could be much lower, considering the peer-reviewed publications). Say that the rest are undecided.
Because PRI’s mission is to support free enterprise, they will only publish articles that reflect the disagreement with the majority. It’s their mission. If regulations made into law inhibit the right of any company to make a profit in an unfettered way, they will tend to resist it, because their mission is to promote “free market solutions.”
PRI also has an environmental component of their mission, but the main environmental initiatives they will support will be things like the Nature Conservancy, which buys land in order to protect it (free enterprise environmentalism). They will tend to frown on legislated caps and regulations whenever it inhibits free enterprise. If a global crisis is looming, and if legislation and public investment in renewable energy is needed to reduce catastrophic effects, PRI will still point to a few success stories about companies that did nice things for the environment by their own choice, and not because of legislation, and claim that the real solution lies there – even if such a solution would not be enough.
To be truly fair, you must be as skeptical of sources like this as you are of Gore.
And when you find an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal or any other paper that is critical of Gore’s environmentalism, you should not claim that the Wall Street Journal itself raised questions about Gore, just because an op-ed piece did so. Newspaper codes of ethics require them to strive to be unbiased, and when publishing letters or opinion pieces, to consider views that are contrary to those of the editor and publisher. The fact that an op-ed piece appears doesn’t mean it reflects the editor’s opinion. Often the contrary is true.