By Chris Horner, Planet Gore

So, per the WSJ’s Environmental Capital blog, it seems that someone at Bonner & Associates - possibly on behalf of a client or possibly on their own initiative, dunno can’t tell yet - forged some letters to Members asking them to vote against the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade energy-rationing legislation, which is based on the claim that the earth is warming alarmingly and computer models project that it will get warmer still.

Bill co-author and Special Global Warming Committee (really) chairman Ed Markey is shocked, shocked that someone would engage in subterfuge on this issue, and vows a congressional investigation.

Pause.

Surely you remember Markey’s outrage over those falsehoods, frauds and far, far worse underlying his legislation’s express premise. Like the “Hockey Stick” swindle? His fulmination over Gore’s phony claims which were outed by the U.K, High Court? The fraud at University of Albany relating to a key, apparently fabricated, data set relied upon by the IPCC for its claims? NASA repeatedly being caught in funny business with data, only to have the gremlins get back into the system and re-monkey the numbers after they’ve been corrected? Over taxpayer-funded surface temperature stations being moved from fields to parking lots, over air conditioning units, and even next to BBQ grills (and the data being used by NASA for it’s sexed up claims)? About EPA claiming that CO2 poses an “endangerment” to human health and the environment, demurring on the idea that it would perform its own research of the matter saying it outsourced that function to the IPCC (seriously), which, uh, says right there on its website that it conducts no research? You shrieked to the heavens over Team Gore smearing Roger Revelle in his grave, chasing Will Happer and Sherwood Idso out of government jobs, and their doppelgangers’ current assault on EPA whistleblower Alan Carlin - didn’t you? And about torturing children so that they report nightmares, refuse water, and even get committed after melting down from being told they’re contributing to an ongoing ecological crisis? About physical attacks and death threats against skeptic scientists for the crime of speaking out about science?

Right?

Yeah, nary a whimper because, you know, that’s all chump change. I suppose I could go on. Like, maybe, write a book titled “Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed” (talk about ammo for a special committee).

Please, congressman. Spare us your dudgeon. See post here.

Christopher C. Horner is a Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the author of two books on global warming. He is the author of Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed (2008) and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism (2007); the latter was on the New York Times Bestseller list for many weeks.

Marian Wilkinson Environment Editor

Fifteen senior Australian climate scientists have hit back at the resurgence of climate scepticism among the nation’s politicians and the media, warning that the threat from climate change is real, urgent and approaching a series of “tipping points” where it will feed on itself.

“New findings suggest that the situation is, if anything, more serious than the assessment of just a few years ago”, say the scientists, who include the CSIRO’s Dr Michael Raupach and Dr John Church, along with the Australian National University’s Professor Will Steffen, who recently completed a report on climate change science for the Federal Government.

Writing in today’s Herald, the scientists, many of whom worked with the top United Nations scientific body on climate change, argue “rapid, sustained and effective” cuts in the world’s greenhouse gas emissions are needed to avoid dangerous climate change.

Dr Raupach, who monitors greenhouse gas emissions globally, said the scientists joined together because of their growing concern about climate scepticism in the Australian debate.

“It’s a concern that I think is widely felt among many climate scientists in Australia,” he said. He referred to sceptics’ claims that the earth was cooling and that solar flares and sunspots were responsible for increasing warming, not human-caused emissions from burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests. “These arguments keep being recycled even though they have been rebutted in public many times,” Dr Raupach said. “We felt the need to state the evidence-based position as we see it.”

Last week the senior shadow cabinet member Tony Abbott repeated many climate sceptics’ claims in The Australian, even though he argued the Liberal Party should pass the Government’s emissions trading scheme for political reasons. Leading National Party figures, including the party’s Senate leader, Barnaby Joyce, are vocal climate sceptics, as is the Liberal Party Senate leader, Nick Minchin.

The Family First senator, Steve Fielding, returned from a conference in Washington in June, at which scepticism about climate science was discussed, to express his doubts about human-induced climate change. The Senate is due to debate the Government’s emissions trading scheme within the next fortnight.

The scientists are particularly concerned about claims that the earth is cooling because temperature increases since 2002 have not happened as fast those in the previous few years. “Some people have seen that as evidence that the whole game is off, that climate change is not an issue,” Dr Raupach said. “In fact it’s normal climate variability.” The overall warming trend has been inexorably upwards, the scientists say. Read more here.

Icecap Note: The alarmists are becoming increasingly frantic as the world cools as the public and politicians willingness to accept economic pain when the alarmists forecasts are failing. In a clear example of cognitive dissonance these alarmists are behaving like the cult whose spaceship did not arrive as originally forecast but who reassure their followers it is just delayed and will be even bigger and more glorious than originally thought when it arrives. Read more about why this group will not easily accept their theory has failed and projections were unwarranted here.

The Resilient Earth

We have all become familiar with the sloppy, bureaucracy driven science promulgated by the UN IPCC. Now a another organization, the International Council for Science (ICSU), is vying for leadership in ruining free scientific inquiry world wide. “Natural sciences should no longer dictate the Earth system research agenda,” proclaimed their manifesto, which appeared in the July 17, 2009, issue of Science. “Social sciences will be at least as important in its next phase.”

After praising how the IPCC helped move the issue of global warming from lab benches to national capitals (turning climate science into a political circus in the process) and was recognized for its efforts by the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize (they conspicuously didn’t mention Al Gore), a troika of ICSU leaders - Walter V. Reid, chair of the ICSU Earth System Visioning Task Group, Catherine Bréchignac, president of ICSU, and Yuan Tseh Lee, president-elect of ICSU - have plainly stated their future intentions: the creation of a single research framework for the natural sciences world wide. According to them:

In the past, a small group of scientists would be charged with determining the most pressing research questions. But new communication technologies now allow the wisdom and expertise of a far broader global community of natural and social scientists, technology experts, decision-makers, and citizens to play a role.

This is socialist thinking at its finest, instead of that “small group of scientists” being allowed to determine what subjects to investigate, which questions to ask, they will be directed by the “wisdom” of the “broader global community.” A community not just made up of muzzy headed bureaucrats, masquerading as scientists, but by a whole cadre of non-scientists: social scientists, who don’t know jack about the physical sciences; technology experts, who presumably have products they will want to sell; decision-makers, meaning politicians and other government functionaries; and citizens, like Al Gore, Sheryl Crow and Bono each with their own personal agendas no doubt. To give their effort a egalitarian sheen the public is invited to comment and “vote” on their website.

“There is an urgent need and a unique window of opportunity to engage, promote, and develop Earth system research for the benefit of society,” said Dr Reid. “This online consultation is the first step towards meeting that need.” According to the ICSU press release on the visioning process, “the current research structures do not provide the integrated approach required to answer the most pressing societal issues - protecting the planet and ensuring sustainable human development.” In other words, we can’t let those scientists do whatever they want! No, we need to tell them what they should be working on. After all, look what a bang up job the IPCC has done with global warming.

It’s easy to promote a new agenda for others when it is your ideas being promoted - but who said that your ideas are the correct ones? Or the public’s opinions for that matter? This past year has seen suggestions about how to obfuscate global warming science using “common climate language” and how to shift the burden for CO2 reduction to individuals by blaming the world’s “top billion polluters,” now this. Seems that the Earth systems crowd is trying to cash in before the global warming scare goes bust.

Why is it that these scientists-turned-bureaucrat and social sciences types are always trying to grab control of real working scientists’ laboratories and research agendas? Sorry, but science is not an audience participation sport. If you wish to be involved in doing real, meaningful research then forget your degrees in sociology and political science. Get an education in something useful, like physics, chemistry, biology, oceanography, geology, atmospheric physics, solar physics, or paleontology (the list goes on from here). Stop attending politically motivate conferences held by agenda driven organizations and do something useful with your lives.

When will the world’s bureaucratic bozos learn that science only works when inquiry is free and unfettered. You can’t negotiate with nature, it is what it is, and science is driven by nature. You can tell science what your polls and organizations want it to study, but that has no bearing on what science should study. So, for trying to encumber science with your personal political prejudices, this Crank of the Week is all yours ISCU.

See post and other Resilient Earth posts here.