Sowell on global warming

Thomas Sowell, who G. Gordon Liddy calls the smartest man in America, has this to say about global warming:

Yes, Virginia, there are skeptics about global warming among scientists who study weather and climate. There are arguments both ways — which is why so many in politics and in the media are so busy selling the notion that there is no argument.

If you heard both arguments, you might not be so willing to go along with those who are prepared to ruin the economy, sacrificing jobs and the national standard of living on the altar to the latest in an unending series of crusades, conducted by politicians and other people seeking to tell everyone else how to live.

What about all those scientists mentioned, cited, or quoted by global-warming crusaders?

There are all kinds of scientists, from chemists to nuclear physicists to people who study insects, volcanoes, and endocrine glands — none of whom is an expert on weather or climate, but all of whom can be listed as scientists, to impress people who don’t scrutinize the list any further. That ploy has already been used.

Then there are genuine scientific experts on weather and climate. The National Academy of Sciences came out with a report on global warming back in 2001 with a very distinguished list of such experts listed. The problem is that not one of those very distinguished scientists actually wrote the report — or even saw it before it was published.

One of those very distinguished climate scientists — Richard S. Lindzen of MIT — publicly repudiated the conclusions of that report, even though his name had been among those used as window dressing on the report. But the media may not have told you that.

In short, there has been a full court press to convince the public that “everybody knows” that a catastrophic global warming looms over us, that human beings are the cause of it, and that the only solution is to turn more money and power over to the government to stop us from our dangerous ways of living.

Among the climate experts who are not part of that “everybody” are not only Professor Lindzen but also Fred Singer and Dennis Avery, whose book Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years, punctures the hot air balloon of the global warming crusaders. So does the book Shattered Consensus, edited by Patrick J. Michaels, professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, which contains essays by others who are not part of “everybody.”

Usually when the hucksters scream the loudest that everything is settled and there is no more to argue about it is a sign that they realize that the scam is about to collapse. In this case the willing participation of the mainstream media will allow the scam to be sustained for much longer than would otherwise be possible. Add to this the fact that major portions of the scientific community have been reduced to grant-seeking rubber stamps for whatever politically correct hobgoblin the elites are currently using to frighten the unwashed and you have a hoax that can be sustained for decades.

That is until you factor in the Internet and talk radio. This is why the effort is being made to equate global warming denial to holocaust denial. Parenthetically, this creates some problems for the moonbat left. After all they are making common cause with the real life Islamofascist holocaust deniers in their war against the Bush administration.

As Michael Crichton points out in his novel State of Fear frightened people can be induced to surrender both wealth and freedom to those who promise them safety. Those who are pointing to the gaping flaws in the scientific case for global warming are as welcome in the debate as a skunk is at a church picnic. And for people used to manipulating government power to get what they want tactics like reviving the misnamed "Fairness Doctrine" for broadcast communication and subjecting Internet blogs to McCain/Feingold campaign finance regulations are par for the course.

In other words, if you can't out argue your opponent use the dead hand of government to gag them.