bClimate change?

Warming alarmism cooling down

Global warming alarmism peaked in 2007 with calls for vast increases in government control to stifle industrial growth, eliminate fossil fuels and impose new carbon taxes. We were told desperate measures are needed because there’s a scientific “consensus” that man-made greenhouse gases are increasing dangerously. Former Vice President Al Gore said there’s no legitimate objection to the catastrophes he and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predict.

All this received much media coverage and support from politicians and government bureaucrats, who stand to gain control if we heed their warnings. The problem is, there’s no scientific consensus for doomsday claims, let alone that drastic remedies are needed.

Growing numbers of global warming science skeptics are making their opposition known. They include experts in climatology, oceanography, geology, biology, environmental sciences and physics, among others. Contrary to alarmist claims, they’re not on the payrolls of the big oil companies. They are affiliated with prestigious institutions worldwide, including Harvard, NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, MIT, the International Arctic Research Center, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and many others. Many shared a portion of IPCC’s 2007 Nobel Peace Prize (cowon with Gore), and others have won previous Nobel Prizes for their research.

A U.S. Senate report accumulated more than 400 of their views to refute Gore’s claim of “consensus.”

For example, physics professor emeritus Dr. Howard Hayden of the University of Connecticut said, “You think SUVs are the cause of glaciers shrinking? . . . Don’t believe what you hear out of Hollywood and Washington, D.C. . . . [C]limate history proves that Gore has the relationship between carbon dioxide concentration and global warming backward. A higher concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not cause the Earth to be warmer. Instead, a warmer Earth causes the higher carbon dioxide levels.”

Climatologist Robert Durrenberger, past president of the American Association of State

Climatologists, said, “because of all the misinformation that Gore and his army have been spreading about climate change I have decided that real climatologists should try to help the public understand the nature of the problem.”

Read the consensus-refuting comments of these scientists online at www.epw.senate.gov (click on “U.S. Senate Report: Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007”).

As Swedish geologist Dr. Wibjorn Karlen, professor emeritus at Stockholm University, wrote, “Newspapers should think about the damage they are doing to many persons, particularly young kids, by spreading the exaggerated views of a human impact on climate . . . . As far as I can see the IPCC ‘Global Temperature’ is wrong. Temperature is fluctuating but it is still most places cooler than in the 1930s and 1940s . . . it will take about 800 years before the water level has increased by one” meter.

Even if the earth is undergoing climate change, it’s foolish to charge carelessly into increased regulations without fully understanding the effect those regulations would have on the global economy.

Let’s be frank: Incumbents abuse mailings

As we stumble into a new year under less than entirely auspicious circumstances — it is an election year after all, bound to feature plenty of mud and empty rhetoric, even as the situation in the world looks genuinely ominous — we can expect even more misuse of taxpayers’ resources by incumbent politicians protecting their sinecures.

The privilege of “franking” mail, with a member of Congress’ signature, original or reproduced, standing in for a stamp, was begun to allow members to respond to mail from constituents without breaking the congressional office or campaign budget. It has evolved into a large-scale industry of shameless self-promotion.

An Associated Press review of public records shows that during 2006, an election year, House members spent $20.3 million in taxpayers’ dollars to send mailings to constituents and others. Obviously this was more than simply responding to constituents requesting information or clarification about members’ position on key issues. Most of it was blatantly self-promotional, featuring glossy flattering photos showing off all the roads, bridges and community centers delivered at the expense of taxpayers in other districts. While franked mailings cannot be blatantly political, the boundaries are not always clear, and even “nonpolitical” mailings can have political benefits by reminding voters who represents them and putting a relentlessly positive spin on his or her activities.

Republican Rep. Ray Lahood of Illinois, who claims never to have used the franking privilege for mass mailings himself, has repeatedly introduced bills to ban mass mailings, reserving the franking privilege for answering constituent mail only. Of course, those bills routinely die in committee.

The use of the franking privilege for self-promotional mass mailings is yet another reason that campaign finance reform that limits or tries to equalize campaign spending is unfair (as well as unconstitutional) incumbent protection. Franked mass mailings at taxpayer expense give incumbents an advantage that a challenger can overcome only by spending more.

We’d love to see reform of the franking privilege before the congressional election season gets fully under way. We’re more likely to see massive abuse of the privilege.