consensus

This week, Heartland Institute President and CEO Joseph Bast joined the Unbiased America show to talk about the new book, Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming. Unbiased America is a weekly video podcast featuring a panel of several liberty-minded individuals who strive to “create a platform for discussion and debate.” Bast dismantles the claim that 97% or scientists have arrived at a consensus that man is causing catastrophic global warming.

Sociologist Robert Brulle’s recent Washington Post op-ed “America Has Been Duped on Climate Change” (1/6/15) is reminiscent of President Barack Obama’s petulant response to anyone who disagrees with him concerning the legality and effectiveness of new gun control regulations. Obama can’t imagine any person legitimately questioning whether the federal government has the constitutional authority to restrict an American’s right to keep and bear arms, despite the plain language presented in the Second Amendment.

Senators Edward Markey, Barbara Boxer, and Sheldon Whitehouse sent letters to 100 business and think tanks – including The Heartland Institute – demanding that they divulge any funding they have provided to scientists skeptical of the left’s crazy opinions about the causes and consequences of climate change.

One has to wonder if global warming promoters are oblivious to the manner in which their talking point narratives are plagued with crippling contradictions. Consider the following statements, paraphrased from my own experience of being on the receiving end of such assertions:

Left-leaning environmentalists, media and academics have long railed against the alleged conservative “war on science.” They augment this vitriol with substantial money, books, documentaries and conference sessions devoted to “protecting” global warming alarmists from supposed “harassment” by climate chaos skeptics, whom they accuse of wanting to conduct “fishing expeditions” of alarmist emails and “rifle” their file cabinets in search of juicy material (which might expose collusion or manipulated science).

  We are lectured monotonously about the “consensus” that carbon dioxide produced by human activities is “highly likely to cause dangerous global warming”. The alarmist computer models are all based…