By Lawrence Solomon, National Review On-Line on CBS News
Ever wonder how Al Gore, the United Nations, and company continue to get away with their claim of a “scientific consensus” confirming their doomsday view of global warming? Look no farther than Wikipedia for a stunning example of how the global-warming propaganda machine works. As you (or your kids) probably know, Wikipedia is now the most widely used and influential reference source on the Internet and therefore in the world, with more than 50 million unique visitors a month. In theory Wikipedia is a “people’s encyclopedia” written and edited by the people who read it - anyone with an Internet connection. So on controversial topics, one might expect to see a broad range of opinion.
Not on global warming. On global warming we get consensus, Gore-style: a consensus forged by censorship, intimidation, and deceit. I first noticed this when I entered a correction to a Wikipedia page on the work of Naomi Oreskes, author of the now-infamous paper, published in the prestigious journal Science, claiming to have exhaustively reviewed the scientific literature and found not one single article dissenting from the alarmist version of global warming. Of course Oreskes’s conclusions were absurd, and have been widely ridiculed. I myself have profiled dozens of truly world-eminent scientists whose work casts doubt on the Gore-U.N. version of global warming. Following the references in my book The Deniers, one can find hundreds of refereed papers that cast doubt on some aspect of the Gore/U.N. case, and that only scratches the surface.
Naturally I was surprised to read on Wikipedia that Oreskes’s work had been vindicated and that, for instance, one of her most thorough critics, British scientist and publisher Bennie Peiser, not only had been discredited but had grudgingly conceded Oreskes was right. I checked with Peiser, who said he had done no such thing. I then corrected the Wikipedia entry, and advised Peiser that I had done so. Peiser wrote back saying he couldn’t see my corrections on the Wikipedia page. I made the changes again, and this time confirmed that the changes had been saved. But then, in a twinkle, they were gone again. I made other changes. And others. They all disappeared shortly after they were made.
Turns out that on Wikipedia some folks are more equal than others. Kim Dabelstein Petersen is a Wikipedia “editor” who seems to devote a large part of his life to editing reams and reams of Wikipedia pages to pump the assertions of global-warming alarmists and deprecate or make disappear the arguments of skeptics. Holding the far more prestigious and powerful position of “administrator” is William Connolley. Connolley is a software engineer and sometime climatologist (he used to hold a job in the British Antarctic Survey), as well as a serial (but so far unsuccessful) office seeker for England’s Green party. And yet by virtue of his power at Wikipedia, Connolley, a ruthless enforcer of the doomsday consensus, may be the world’s most influential person in the global warming debate after Al Gore. Connolley routinely uses his editorial clout to tear down scientists of great accomplishment such as Fred Singer, the first director of the U.S. National Weather Satellite Service and a scientist with dazzling achievements. Under Connolley’s supervision, Wikipedia relentlessly smears Singer as a kook who believes in Martians and a hack in the pay of the oil industry. Wikipedia is full of rules that editors are supposed to follow, and it has a code of civility. Those rules and codes don’t apply to Connolley, or to those he favors. “Peisers crap shouldn’t be in here,” Connolley wrote several weeks ago, in berating a Wikipedian colleague during an “edit war,” as they’re called. Read full story here.
We have pieces of this story before, but felt it was newsworthy it appeared on cbsnews.com. Also it is a reminder to you and your children not to trust Wiki as a reliable source. It was a good idea let go astray.
By Dr. Fred Singer
Dr. James Hansen, chief of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, came to Washington on June 18 at the invitation of Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass) to recreate his famous testimony of the hot, drought-stricken summer of 1988. In this testimony, presided over by Senator Tim Wirth, he had claimed, with 99 percent certainty, that global warming (GW) was manmade; it had a lot to do with starting the craze of climate catastrophism. At that time, Hansen predicted huge temperature increases and apocalyptic consequences, such as sea level rise and catastrophic weather events, unless we stopped burning fossil fuels to generate energy.
It was this hype that led me, first to publish an op-ed article in the Wall Street Journal, then a more detailed article (with oceanographer Roger Revelle and energy expert Chauncey Starr), and finally to studies which concluded that climate change was caused by natural forces rather than by man’s emission of greenhouse gases. Twenty years later, we find that temperatures have hardly increased—in fact they have been falling in the last ten years—and that sea level is nowhere near the levels predicted. None of this has diminished Hansen’s stature as a “prophet” to “true believers” in GW. The acolytes of Al Gore consider Hansen to be the oracle of climate science and have adopted his views uncritically. He himself has not wavered; he now claims certainty “exceeding 99 percent.”
But Hansen has become delusional and this has affected his science adversely. He is possessed by the idea of a “tipping point” - an irreversible change in climate. He is also completely out of step with the “mainstream,” defined as the UN-sponsored group of climate experts, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), who also assert that the cause of climate change is mostly human. Hansen is certainly in complete disagreement with the growing number of “climate skeptics,” who believe that the cause is mostly natural. It has become impossible to carry on a scientific discussion with Hansen. His belief in climate catastrophes has reached a religious fervor; he sees himself as a lone figure, “muzzled” by evil forces, while “crying in the wilderness.” In his appearance in Washington last month he called for oil executives to be tried for “high crimes against humanity and nature.” It is Hansen, and people like him who are spreading disinformation by demonizing carbon dioxide, an innocuous gas and natural component of the atmosphere. Strangely, we support his suggestion for a trial because it would allow the whole matter to be brought into a court of law where evidence has to be produced and cross-examination is permitted. This may be the only way to stop the climate alarmism and quasi-religious movement of which Hansen has been a prime instigator. See English translation of this Italian Newspaper story here.
Icecap Note: Thanks to SPPI for this Hansen letter to Japanese Prime Minister. Hansen continues acting as international lobbyist and crusader again hydrocarbons. Pity he is so muzzled by the Bush Administration.
By Thomson Finanical on Hemscott
The UN’s top climate change official said Thursday that record oil prices, which have surged to $146 a barrel, were positive for the environment. ‘I think they are a net positive. First of all you see that through decreasing demand in Europe and North America where people are becoming much more conscious of petrol prices,’ Yvo de Boer told Agence France-Presse. ‘High oil prices also improve the competitiveness of renewable sources of energy and make it more interesting to focus on energy efficiency,’ he added. De Boer, who heads the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), noted however that high prices also made heavy forms of crude oil, which take energy-intensive extracting and refining, more attractive.
‘There is a risk that as dirty forms of oil become commercially more attractive that would lead to an increase in emissions,’ he said. One such worry is the Canadian tar sands, a dense mixture of sand, water and petroleum used to extract bitumen, which are controversial because of the environmental impact of extracting and refining the mixture. Experts say the tar sands are only viable if world oil prices remain high. There has been a surge in interest for the resources, however, given the possibility of a major source of oil from a stable country such as Canada. The head of India’s state oil company said Thursday that India could invest up to $10 billion dollars in the tar sands in the future. See more here.