By Jim Simpson
Simply unbelievable. On October 27th a “bipartisan” pair of U.S. Senators, West Virginia Democrat, Jay Rockefeller (trustfund baby of Rockefeller’s oil empire), and Olympia (RINO - Maine) Snowe, sent out a letter to ExxonMobil chastising them for supporting politically incorrect global warming research. It is literally a threat letter, demanding that they defund groups like the Competitive Enterprise Insititute, who apparently have provided a thumb in the dyke against the massive assault of the global warming industry. Who in God's green earth do these people think they are? This is blatant censorship! It would be funny if it were not so ominous. Here’s a quote:
ExxonMobil and its partners in denial have manufactured controversy, sown doubt, and impeded progress with strategies all-too reminiscent of those used by the tobacco industry for so many years.
“Tobacco industry?” We all know what happened to them. Does that not sound like a threat to you? Here’s another:
Mainstream media outlets, attacked for being biased, help lend credence to skeptics' views, regardless of their scientific integrity, by giving them relatively equal standing with legitimate scientists.This is simply delusional! I want to know what “mainstream” media outlet has done anything but attack global warming skeptics. Research groups have lost funding, scientists have been attacked and marginalized, and genuine, scientific work questioning the global warming absolutists is routinely ridiculed daily in the press by journalists, Hollywood, the entire Democrat party, a few really stupid republicans, and a virtual army of other self-anointed “scientists”. It has taken tremendous courage for the few real scientists willing to question the junk science used by global warming advocates to mount even a token challenge. The global warming advocates by the way, have a lot more to gain (or lose) than the skeptics.
The letter uses inflammatory, accusatory language like “information laundering,” “bogus ‘scientific’ debate” and even names Tech Central Station as co-conspirator with “a small number of professional skeptics working through scientific-sounding organizations to funnel their viewpoints through non-peer-reviewed websites.”
“…funnel their viewpoints through non-peer-reviewed websites” indeed! Doesn’t that make them sound like some kind of sordid conspiracy, diabolically sneaking their underhanded propaganda into the legitimate stream of scientific debate? But if you believe the letter, you must conclude that there is no debate! It is a settled issue according to these esteemed Senators. You can read the full text of the letter here, and the Wall Street Journal’s deliciously scathing response to it here. What would we do without the Journal to bring issues like this to light?
The “peer-review” process has been so corrupted of late by self-serving organizations seeking large federal grants for overtly politicized issues, that the entire scientific community has lost credibility. Formerly professional journals like Scientific American have become mere platforms for leftist ideological extremists, and their “peer-reviewed” articles are often no more than ad hominem attacks on those few dissenting scientists willing to challenge their federally funded PC propaganda.
Consider what has happened to Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore, who has correctly observed that: “many environmentalists have taken a sharp turn to the ultra-left, ushering in a mood of extremism and intolerance.” For this he has been branded a traitor by the environmental movement and was the subject of a concerted attack led by Scientific American when he dared publish a rebuttal by Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, who was the initial target of the attack.
Environmental hysterics similar to those of the global warming messiahs were delivered in 1974, when Time magazine published a breathless article predicting the cataclysmic onset of global cooling. Read that hilarious chicken little polemic here. Here’s a quote or two (emphases are all mine):
However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler over the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.
Telltale signs are everywhere—from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest. Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7 degrees Farenheit.
Can these people make up their minds? Have the global warming sages looked into northward migration of the armadillo lately? This stuff is simply mindblowing! Time finally recanted their story and admitted they might have been wrong just this year! I doubt if they really thought they were wrong—Time could never be wrong, just intertemporally challenged— and I’m sure they hated admitting it. We can thank the new media for exposing it too, else they doubtless would have kept hypocritically mum. But once exposed, admitting the mistake was necessary to clear the decks for their advocacy of the latest environmentalist fad: global warming.
Do we want to spend the next thirty years and countless billions on research into something our intellectual elite finally fess up in 2040 was bogus all along?
When are these people going to get it? Answer: NEVER. So when is our political system going to produce someone capable and courageous enough to put an end to this nihilistic lunacy?! THAT’S UP TO US, AND IT’S TIME TO GET STARTED, NOW!
This is a scary, ominous letter. The entire global warming debate is a cover for radicals who want to sabotage the U.S. economy while doing little if anything to help “global warming,” if it even exists. The greatest fossil fuel polluters, China, Russia, and most of the developing world are exempt from Kyoto Treaty protocols, which is what they want imposed on the U.S. Meanwhile, we have made great strides in reducing air pollution, and will continue to do so. Imposition of Kyoto’s regulatory regime, on the other hand, would toss the U.S. into an economic depression of unprecedented magnitude, not only wrecking our economy, but in so doing dry up the source of federal funding we already generously provide to study this issue.
I return to my assertion of November 9: this election was a disaster of epic proportions! The ugly truth has already begun to rear its head. We have two years to to avert the final calamity. We need to get started now! Call these people and tell them: NO CENSORSHIP! Better yet, print out and jam their fax machines with endless copies of this or the WSJ article. Here's their info:
Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)
Phone: 202-224-6472
Fax: 202-224-7665
Olympia Snowe (RINO-ME)
Phone: 202-224-5344
Fax: 202-224-1946
God save us all!
Freelance writer Jim Simpson is a former White House staff economist and budget analyst (1987-1993). His writings have been published in the Washington Times, FrontPage Magazine, DefenseWatch, Soldier of Fortune and others.
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