I would like to start this article with something of note. During this time of uncertainty and Obama’s campaign putting out those dire predictions about the country and his view of it – here is a quote that is apropo for today as when it was spoken “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” ~ FDR
Obama, you just keep on hammering your defeatist attitude and your woebegone picture of America. The only ones who will pay attention to this are those who want the government to care for them. I hate to tell Obama this, but the majority of Americans want to take care of themselves. Many of his supporters, and he himself, are practicing and are for class warfare. How he can fool his supporters when he himself is a millionaire is beyond me. I will say this – that the key to socialism is to keep all the people, except the elitist leaders who are to guide these common people for their own good, at a common level… somewhat similar to how the Democratic party has been to their supporters. Think about it and the approach that the Democratic leaders have taken to lead their followers now and in the past – that has been similar to a kindly old slave holder and how he treats his own.
The Democrats have played on peoples’ greed and “what’s in it for me” to maintain their hold on certain segments of society. The Democrats are very good on propaganda. For instance – how in the world could a one term senator with no experience obtain the Democratic Presidential nomination – a senator who has spent most of his first term running for President – prior to that, the experience of a community organizer consisting of, in many cases, belonging to a “Get out the vote” organization called ACORN of which members have been prosecuted for voter fraud. If I am not mistaken, Obama himself worked for ACORN as one of his community organizer duties. Why an organization such as this gets government funding is reprehensible to me!
Now let’s get to the mainstream media members and how they have been approaching their perceived duty to destroy Sarah Palin, McCain’s pick for his running mate. I watched Charlie Gibson’s interview with Sarah Palin. There was no doubt he felt himself to be far above and superior to Sarah Palin. His gotcha question with something he himself didn’t understand was unusually stupid, and he showed himself to be what he is – a Democratic hack with an agenda of his own. If I were McCain or Sarah Palin, I would not go on any talk show on ABC, NBC, MSNBC, or CBS. Even Fox’s Sunday evening show interviewer Chris Wallace is no doubt a Democrat and I wouldn’t even trust him.
Town Hall questions and answers system is the way they should go and speak to outline their proposals and ideas to run the country. That should include ideas to keep socialism out of our government. Also, put down those jet flying, carbon using environmentalists such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Albert Gore, and the other idiots. Also put out forcibly how a billionaire named Soros is trying to buy the election. I think this is one thing that should have been in the campaign finance reform package – to keep some millionaire from trying to buy the elections. Frankly, George Soros has been, all his life, a leech sucking the life out of a free and thriving democracy. When he dies, what will he leave behind but hate and treason?
The parasitic speculators were out to make money on other people’s misery, making money on raising prices of gas due to Hurricane Ike. They are no different than the con artists out in force to defraud people during their period of pain and suffering. Obama is also trying to obtain votes by playing on people’s needs and trying to use greed in his campaign. He is also trying to use a time of upheaval in the stock market to scare people. I don’t think people have developed and thrived on fear, but instead have thrived and developed this country on faith, hope, and courage to look ahead and place their lives and fortunes on their search for true freedom.
Not welcome in the Northeast
Obama has used negativism and fear to get where he is now, and I don’t think the majority of this country will continue to buy his brand of patriotism and leadership. All of those colleges in the East and Northeast who will not allow ROTC programs on their campuses are socialistic and will never be counted on to serve their country, and they have no concern for the continuation of the greatest Democracy ever on the face of the globe. As you can see, they are in the states that go Democratic in just about every election and would undoubtedly be all for socialism, where the elite would be the leaders and would make sure no spark of leadership and ingenuity could emanate from all those common people and they could maintain their superiority.
I will close this section with this: I still have faith and confidence in the majority of the American people and I feel sorry for the minority who are defeatists and scared for their futures.
How is it that Charlie Rangel, Chris Dodd, and Kent Conrad don’t get tagged as crooks as the Republicans would be if they did the same thing? Obama brings up McCain getting special interest money when he is actually the receiver of much more special interest money, such as the $116,000 he received from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whose downfall started this whole humpty dumpty effect on Wall Street. Three of Bill Clinton’s former advisers milked millions from these same companies when Clinton appointed them to work at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Not only that, but Obama received the most money for his campaign from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, second only to Chris Dodd, who also received benefits as did Kent Conrad from CountryWide, another one of the supports taken out of the supports for Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, AIG, and also Fannie and Freddie. And YET Obama has the audacity to blame McCain. I guess he thinks Americans are too stupid to ferret this out. Don’t forget he told his elitist friends in San Francisco how stupid the people of Pennsylvania were, and we all know how stupid the elitists in California are!
May God continue to bless the USA and save us from Barack Hussein Obama!
I will start with an old adage: It depends on whose Ox is gored. Let’s carry this forward and visualize the country as everyone’s Ox. Then it depends on what politician will gore the Ox worse, or maybe someone who will protect the Ox. In my opinion Mrs. Clinton and John McCain would gore the Ox in a more harmful manner, and frankly I don’t want my Ox to be harmed in any way.
Turned to MSNBC on Saturday morning. Caught the Morning Joe program. There was one of their supposed journalists named David Schuster – I thought he was going to have a stroke defending Mrs. Clinton and defending Bill’s right to attack candidates running against Mrs. Clinton because he LOVES her. If he loved her, he wouldn’t be running around with his fly open and a gleam in eyes. What he really wants is to be President again through Mrs. Clinton. The morals of this country degenerated badly during his first eight years. Do you want it to be completely demolished by another four years of the Clintons?
Another endorsement for John McCain from a liberal rag in Philadelphia’s. These Democrats sure love John McCain. No wonder – he is one of them, working as a mole in the Republican party. Maybe leopards can’t change their spots, but McCain is sure trying. He talks of Romney being a flip-flopper, however, he is the master of flip-flopping. He reminds me of a cat, during his campaign, busily burying his mistakes. He may bury them, but they are still very smelly to me.
The Democrats are standing by clapping their hands and shouting encouragement. McCain can’t cover up his depriving people of free speech with the McCain/Feingold Act. He can’t cover up his votes against the Bush tax cuts by saying they should be extended. He is undoubtedly a flip-flopper. He can’t cover up his helping the Democrats to make Bush’s judicial nominees subject to filibuster. He can’t cover up his participation in the Keating Five efforts to clear Keating, who used his savings and loans to steal billions, depriving many retirees and citizens of their life’s savings. McCain received thousands of dollars from Keating towards his campaign and was a house guest of Keating in the Bahamas, and he talks of campaign finance reform – ain’t that a hoot?
See attached:
Remember the Keating Five?
McCain’s own standards would have hung him.
Mr. Levin is also president of the Landmark Legal Foundation.
April 5, 2001 9:15 a.m.
For too long, McCain has been given a free pass by the media, which promotes campaign-finance reform to silence other voices, and by his Republican colleagues, who are concerned about alienating McCain given the GOP’s tenuous majority in the Senate.
In John McCain’s America, any politician who accepts a large contribution or gift from a donor, and then takes steps consistent with the donor’s interests — even though there is no legal quid pro quo — is corrupt. Well, then, by his own standard, McCain is corrupt.
McCain was one of the so-called “Keating Five” senators. He was investigated by the Senate Select Committee on Ethics in 1991 regarding the acceptance of favors from Lincoln Savings & Loan Association (Lincoln) and its owner, Charles H. Keating, Jr. Simply put, the issue was whether McCain and the other senators used their official positions to attempt to pressure Federal Home Loan Bank Board officials to go easy on the troubled institution. Eventually Lincoln went bust, costing depositors and taxpayers millions.
In its final report (November 20, 1991), here is what the Senate Select Committee on Ethics concluded about McCain’s conduct:
“Mr. Keating, his associates, and his friends contributed $56,000 for Senator McCain’s two House races in 1982 and 1984, and $54,000 for his 1986 Senate race. Mr. Keating also provided his corporate plane and/or arranged for payment for the use of commercial or private aircraft on several occasions for travel by Senator McCain and his family, for which Senator McCain ultimately provided reimbursement when called upon to do so. Mr. Keating also allowed Senator McCain and his family to vacation with Mr. Keating and his family, at a home provided by Mr. Keating in the Bahamas, in each of the calendar years 1983 through 1986.
“…[F]rom 1984 to 1987, Senator McCain took actions on Mr. Keating’s behalf or at his request. The Committee finds that Senator McCain had a basis for each of these actions independent of the contributions and benefits he received from Mr. Keating, his associates and friends.
“Based on the evidence available to it, the Committee has given consideration to Senator McCain’s actions on behalf of Lincoln. The Committee concludes that, given the personal benefits and campaign contributions he had received from Mr. Keating, Senator McCain exercised poor judgment in intervening with the regulators without first inquiring as to the Bank Board’s position in the case in a more routine manner. The Committee concludes that Senator McCain’s actions were not improper nor attended with gross negligence and did not reach the level of requiring institutional action against him. The Committee finds that Senator McCain took no further action after the April 9, 1987 meeting when he learned of a criminal referral.
“The Committee reaffirms its prior decision that it does not have jurisdiction to determine the issues of disclosure or reimbursement pertaining to flights provided by American Continental Corporation while Senator McCain was a Member of the House of Representatives. The Committee did consider the effect of such on his state of mind and judgment in taking steps to assist Lincoln.
“Senator McCain has violated no law of the United States or specific Rule of the United States Senate; therefore, the Committee concludes that no further action is warranted with respect to Senator McCain on the matters investigated during the preliminary inquiry.”
McCain was the only Republican implicated in the Keating Five scandal, yet today he lectures his party and his president about “the corrupting influence” of money in politics. He rails against the so-called “wealthy special interests” and their ability to buy access to elected officials, yet this is precisely what the Keating Five scandal was all about. And, of course, under McCain’s current standard, a politician who takes a principled position that may benefit a donor is corrupt, even if no law has been violated.
The John McCain of old should be thankful that his political fate wasn’t determined by John McCain the reformer.
He has managed to blunt his effort to give illegal immigrants amnesty by saying “We HEARD the American people and the border comes first.” That isn’t saying what he and Teddy would cook up if he became President. Also, how might he work with the Democrats as he did with campaign finance reform and other things? I know he was a POW, and somehow this makes him a hero – how, I can’t understand.
I was in during Korea and I saw quite a few REAL heroes. I was on an aircraft carrier and our Chief of Commissary was a member of the Bataan Death March, consequently he saw to it that we were the best fed ship in the US Navy. There were thousands who were on this Bataan Death March. Also, there were hundreds of thousands of POWs in World War II held by the Japanese and Germans, and I would say they are all heroes in the same class as McCain.
I have noticed a lot of flailing around by old timers in the Senate and Congress. They can feel their power, in which they glory, being taken away by electing of outsiders, so they are all flooding to McCain. I am sorry to say, but Obama has come up with the best message. That message is change. Time for the old guard to just fade away and let the future happen.
Can you visualize what could happen if all the old timers in the Senate and Congress were to leave and return to the past in which they are mired and let new blood come in to make change and take us to the future? As far as I am concerned, this Congress and Senate we now have are led by a herd of old incumbents who want to continue the same old game they have been playing for years and years.
“What we have here is a failure to communicate” with the American people. We haven’t had a member of the Senate as a President of the USA since JFK, and McCain is no JFK. JFK looked to the future. McCain is mired in the past. He has used the young men and women on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan as foils in his campaign, which is DISGUSTING. He is now disseminating lies and chicanery in his campaign. I guess you can see by my writings that I am not a fan of John McCain. If he wins the nomination and runs against Hillary, I WILL stay home. If he runs against Obama, I will vote for Obama.
Now I will cover the media and poll manipulators. As you can see, they are all pushing McCain. I guess they go by the old axiom they prefer the devil they know. Also, he gives them more fodder as a destructive tool against the Republican party. He has delighted in his mantra being a maverick. The media LOVES this! Now he is calling on the Republican voters to vote him in as President. Why SHOULD they?
The media has gotten many, many stories in the past from his antics. We don’t need antics in this country. We need someone working with Congress and Senate for a purpose geared to the future, not to the past. This would be very debilitating to the media, and wouldn’t gain them the stories they love to cover. The media should be a voice of the people, not a voice of support for the old, tired politicians. As you can see, many, many liberal newspapers, or rags (if that’s what you wish to call them) are endorsing McCain. Makes you wonder what engenders this adoration.
John McCain said, on Meet the Press, that he would be the best to unite the Republican party. What a joke! McCain, if he wins the nomination, will split the Republican party and insure a Democratic win and destroy the Republican party. Do you think that the liberal tv media and liberal newspapers, with their love affair with McCain, are not doing this with a purpose? You gotta be kidding! Let’s hope those media outlets will not get their way.
From what I have observed of the Senate, and consequently Senators in the last several years, is that they are obsessed with their power and use it for destructive purposes, not constructive purposes – keeping judges from being confirmed and making a show out of everything they do. Remember the Judge Bork and Clarence Thomas hearings? The worst thing that ever happened to the legislative bodies was when they started covering them with tv cameras. It gives them a chance to preen, pontificate, and pose for the cameras. Also their ability to insert and change whatever they say into the Congressional record should be taken away.
I see a lot of free media coverage given to McCain and Huckabee, but not for Romney. I wonder why. The poll manipulators and how they frame the questions and the results they give are in the main as politically destructive as the old, old Senate and Senators we have at the moment. As far as I am concerned, this Senate works with a closed mind and looks to the past, not to the future. Nuff said.
Chirac, being exposed as a crook, doesn’t even seem to bother the French. Are they so inured to political skullduggery? Their country went downhill under Chirac, and I guess as long as they only have to pretend to work 35 hours a week, and take weeks and weeks of vacation, they will let their country go to hell. Wonder how much money Chirac received from Saddam Hussein? We have had two Presidents in the last century that placed their country above their political aspirations… Teddy Roosevelt and Harry Truman. We need others of similar ilk, not someone who wants to lay the big stick down and abrogate the Truman doctrine. Freedom through strength has always been known as the core of our country, and is still sonsidered important to many people in this country – even a few Democrats feel that way. How do you spell hypocrisy? I say A-L G-O-R-E. I will just include a couple of articles to explain his mendacity. See enclosed:
Al Gore, Environmentalist and Zinc Miner
By Micah Morrison
06/29/2000
The Wall Street Journal
“The lakes and rivers sustain us; they flow through the veins of the earth and into our own. But we must take care to let them flow back out as pure as they came, not poison and waste them without thought for the future.”
– Al Gore, “Earth in the Balance” “He taught me how to plow a steep hillside with a team of mules. He taught me how to clear three acres of heavily-wooded forest with a double-bladed axe. . . . He taught me how to stop gullies before they got started. He taught me how to drive, how to shoot a rifle, how to fish, how to swim. We loved to swim together in the Caney Fork River off a big flat rock on the back side of his farm.”
– Al Gore on his father, Sen. Albert Gore Sr., from algore2000.com
CARTHAGE, Tenn. — On his most recent tax return, as he has the past 25 years, Vice President Al Gore lists a $20,000 mining royalty for the extraction of zinc from beneath his farm here in the bucolic hills of the Cumberland River Valley. In total, Mr. Gore has earned $500,000 from zinc royalties. His late father, the senator, introduced him not only to the double-bladed ax but also to Armand Hammer, chairman of Occidental Petroleum Corp., which sold the zinc-rich land to the Gore family in 1973.It also seems that zinc from Mr. Gore’s property ends up in the cool waters of the Caney Fork River, an oft-celebrated site in Gore lore. A major shaft and tailings pond of the Pasminco Zinc Mine sit practically in the backyard of the vice president’s Tennessee homestead. Zinc and other metals from the Gore land move from underground tunnels through elaborate extraction processes. Waste material ends up in the tailings pond, from which water flows into adjacent Caney Fork, languidly rolling on to the great Cumberland.Mining is intrinsically a messy business, and Pasminco Zinc generally has a good environmental record. But not one that would pass muster with “Earth in the Balance,” Mr. Gore’s best-selling environmental book. As recently as May 16, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation issued a “Notice of Violation.” It informed Pasminco that it had infringed the Tennessee Water Quality Control act due to high levels of zinc in the river.Those zinc levels exceeded standards established by the state and the federal Environmental Protection Agency. A “sample analysis found that total zinc was 1.480 mg/L [milligrams per liter], which is greater than the monthly average of .65 mg/L and the daily maximum of 1.30 mg/L.” Pasminco “may be subject to enforcement action pursuant to The Tennessee Water Quality Control Act of 1977 for the aforementioned violation,” the notice stated.This was not the first time Mr. Gore’s mining benefactor had run afoul of environmental regulations. In 1996, the mine twice failed biomonitoring tests designed to protect water quality in the Caney Fork for fish and wildlife. Mine discharge “failed two acute tests for toxicity to Ceriodaphnia dubia,” a species of water flea, according to a mine permit analysis by Tennessee environmental authorities. “The discharge of industrial wastewater from Outfall #001 [the Caney Fork effluent] contains toxic metals (copper and zinc),” the analysis stated. “The combined effect of these pollutants may be detrimental to fish and aquatic life.”Tests for The Wall Street Journal by two independent Tennessee laboratories, conducted in September 1999 and this month, showed trace amounts of zinc and other metals in the Caney Fork that were in compliance with federal standards. But soil tests revealed what one lab called problematic “large quantities” of heavy metals in the riverbank soil downstream of the Caney Fork effluent. In both sets of tests, samples of water and soil were provided to the labs by the Journal. Soil samples drawn from the mine effluent and downstream “contained large quantities of Barium, Iron, and Zinc, as well as smaller amounts of Arsenic, Chromium and Lead,” Warner Laboratories found in September. “The soil from each of these sites seems to have some problems according to our findings. The levels of Barium, Iron and Zinc far exceed any report limit [a detection threshold within the testing system] and it should be noted that these results are extremely high compared to typical soil found in a populated neighborhood.”
Tests conducted in June by the Environmental Science Corp. found similar traces of heavy metals in the water and soil. The report found the soil samples to contain relatively high levels of “Barium, Iron, Zinc, and several of the other metals, including Aluminum, Calcium and Magnesium.” The ESC report also noted traces of cyanide in some water and soil samples.
Pasminco is not required to test soil along the banks of the Caney Fork. Both labs, while noting anomalies in the soil, believe the results do not warrant concern as environmental hazards. The water and soil clearly are not, however, “as pure as they came,” as Mr. Gore demands in “Earth in the Balance.”
A 1998 study by the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based organization, criticized the zinc-mining operation for purchasing a toxic waste that included sulfuric acid and reselling it as fertilizer. The mine buys acid waste from steel plants, uses it as purification agent in zinc processing, and then sells the waste to fertilizer companies, according to a report in the Tennessean, a Nashville newspaper. Most soil scientists say the procedure is safe.
Tennessee environmentalists disagree. “Clearly, when you spread those types of chemicals around on a farm or on the land, you’re going to get a lot of runoff,” Brian McGuire, executive director of Tennessee Citizens Action told the Tennessean. “So it’s going to get into the water. We’re poisoning ourselves.”
A Pasminco official noted that the mine has had few violations and works to uphold a “very strict standard” of environmental quality. The Gore campaign did not respond to requests for comment. But some Tennessee residents say Mr. Gore becomes testy when questioned about the zinc mine. Tom Gniewek, a retired chemical engineer from Camden, Tenn., has studied the zinc mine for years and tried to question Mr. Gore about it at town-hall meetings. “He gets real angry,” Mr. Gniewek says. “Instead of answering the question, he attacked my motives and accused people like me of vandalizing the earth.”
Mr. Gore’s original purchase of the zinc-rich land is of some interest as well, shedding light on his long relationship with Mr. Hammer, the former Occidental Petroleum chief. A controversial influence peddler who trafficked in politicians of all stripes and parties, Mr. Hammer pleaded guilty in 1975 to providing hush money in the Watergate scandal.
Mr. Hammer cut a wide swath across Washington from the 1930s until his death in 1990 at 92. His controversial career was marked by decades of profitable business dealings with the Soviet Union, which were closely watched by the FBI. He leapt into the big time by acquiring Libyan oil rights for Occidental Petroleum through what biographer Edward Jay Epstein has characterized as a combination of shrewd business dealings and bribery. After his 1975 conviction, Mr. Hammer spent the rest of his life campaigning for a pardon, which President Bush granted in 1989.
Mr. Hammer cultivated close relationships with many politicians, but he was closest to Mr. Gore’s father, a U.S. senator from 1953 until 1971. Mr. Hammer’s Occidental Minerals snapped up the zinc-bearing property in 1972. The senior Mr. Gore’s farm is on the opposite bank of the Caney Fork. Mr. Hammer paid $160,000, double the only other offer, according to the Washington Post, which first disclosed details of the arrangement during the 1992 presidential campaign.
According to deed documents in Carthage, a year later Mr. Hammer sold the land to the senior Mr. Gore for $160,000, adding the extremely generous $20,000 per year mineral royalty. Ten minutes after that sale, the former senator executed a deed selling the property, including the mineral rights, to his son, the future vice president, for $140,000. Albert Gore Sr. told the Post he kept the first $20,000 royalty for himself, evening up the father-son transaction.
The purpose of the sale appears to have been transferring the annual $20,000 payment from Mr. Hammer to the young Mr. Gore. The Post reported that the “$20,000 a year amounts to $227 an acre, much more than the $30 an acre Occidental Minerals, part of Hammer’s oil company, paid the senior Gore and some neighbors a few years before the 1973 arrangement.”
In 1992 then-Sen. Gore told the Post that although he had been working for “slave wages” as a newspaper reporter, he quickly came up with a $40,000 down payment from two previous real-estate investments. In 1974, the zinc mine began annual payments of $20,000 to Mr. Gore, an important source of income to the young politician for many years.
After the senior Mr. Gore lost his 1970 Senate re-election bid, Mr. Hammer named him chairman of Island Creek Coal, an Occidental subsidiary, and appointed him to the board of directors of Occidental Petroleum. The late Mr. Gore’s estate is conservatively valued at $1.5 million, including a block of Occidental stock worth between $250,000 and $500,000. The vice president is executor and trustee of his father’s estate, with “sole discretion” to manage a trust on his mother’s behalf.
As Albert Gore Jr. rose through the political ranks, Mr. Hammer continued to assist him. The Hammer family and corporations made donations up to the legal maximum in all of Mr. Gore’s campaigns, according to Mr. Hammer’s former personal assistant, Neil Lyndon, writing in London’s Daily Telegraph. Mr. Gore regularly dined with Mr. Hammer and Occidental lobbyists in Washington, Mr. Lyndon wrote. “Separately and together, the Gores sometimes used Hammer’s luxurious private Boeing 727 for journeys and jaunts.” The former Hammer aide noted that the “profound and prolonged involvement between Hammer and Gore has never been revealed or investigated.”
Mr. Hammer was famous for his dealings with the Soviet Union, and received a humanitarian award in Moscow in 1987 from International Physicians Against Nuclear War. Mr. Gore, who had been elected to the Senate in 1984, delivered a speech to the same convention, saying conventional arms should be cut along with nuclear weapons. As vice president, Mr. Gore became the Clinton administration point man on relations with Russia.
Mr. Gore would be well served to get the facts out about his relationship with Mr. Hammer, beginning with the zinc bounty. The issue is bigger than whether there is a pollution problem in Tennessee. When Mr. Gore’s zinc riches are at stake, he appears unwilling to live by the standards he sets out for others in “Earth in the Balance.”
His record of uncompromising environmental rhetoric seems another instance of the kind of hypocrisy that has dogged his campaign for months. He’s been accused of being a slumlord for providing substandard housing to a tenant on a rental unit adjoining his farm. A well-remembered 1996 speech to the Democratic National Convention, invoking his sister’s death by lung cancer and attacking the tobacco industry, also contributed to his reputation for slippery sanctimony when his close ties to Tennessee tobacco were revealed. And of course Mr. Gore has been sharply criticized for posturing on campaign finance reform while under investigation for possible fund-raising crimes in the 1996 campaign.
No mention of the zinc mine appears in “Earth in the Balance,” on Mr. Gore’s campaign Web site or in his speeches. At this point the story of the Tennessee farm, the zinc mine, the politician and the influence peddler is largely one of cant and hypocrisy. This is not a hanging crime in the political world, but the vice president, among others, might note that Bill Clinton’s problems also began with a murky land deal and a shady financier.
“..it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds..”
–Samuel Adams
— Next Article —
They call this a consensus?
Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post
Published: Saturday, June 02, 2007
“Only an insignificant fraction of scientists deny the global warming crisis. The time for debate is over. The science is settled.”
S o said Al Gore … in 1992. Amazingly, he made his claims despite much evidence of their falsity. A Gallup poll at the time reported that 53% of scientists actively involved in global climate research did not believe global warming had occurred; 30% weren’t sure; and only 17% believed global warming had begun. Even a Greenpeace poll showed 47% of climatologists didn’t think a runaway greenhouse effect was imminent; only 36% thought it possible and a mere 13% thought it probable.
Today, Al Gore is making the same claims of a scientific consensus, as do the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and hundreds of government agencies and environmental groups around the world. But the claims of a scientific consensus remain unsubstantiated. They have only become louder and more frequent.
Al Gore’s views have credible dissenters.
More than six months ago, I began writing this series, . When I began, I accepted the prevailing view that scientists overwhelmingly believe that climate change threatens the planet. I doubted only claims that the dissenters were either kooks on the margins of science or sell-outs in the pockets of the oil companies.
National Post’s Deniers series:
Scientists who challenge the climate change debate The series
My series set out to profile the dissenters — those who deny that the science is settled on climate change — and to have their views heard. To demonstrate that dissent is credible, I chose high-ranking scientists at the world’s premier scientific establishments. I considered stopping after writing six profiles, thinking I had made my point, but continued the series due to feedback from readers. I next planned to stop writing after 10 profiles, then 12, but the feedback increased. Now, after profiling more than 20 deniers, I do not know when I will stop — the list of distinguished scientists who question the IPCC grows daily, as does the number of emails I receive, many from scientists who express gratitude for my series.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped believing that a scientific consensus exists on climate change. Certainly there is no consensus at the very top echelons of scientists — the ranks from which I have been drawing my subjects — and certainly there is no consensus among astrophysicists and other solar scientists, several of whom I have profiled. If anything, the majority view among these subsets of the scientific community may run in the opposite direction. Not only do most of my interviewees either discount or disparage the conventional wisdom as represented by the IPCC, many say their peers generally consider it to have little or no credibility. In one case, a top scientist told me that, to his knowledge, no respected scientist in his field accepts the IPCC position.
What of the one claim that we hear over and over again, that 2,000 or 2,500 of the world’s top scientists endorse the IPCC position? I asked the IPCC for their names, to gauge their views. “The 2,500 or so scientists you are referring to are reviewers from countries all over the world,” the IPCC Secretariat responded. “The list with their names and contacts will be attached to future IPCC publications, which will hopefully be on-line in the second half of 2007.”
An IPCC reviewer does not assess the IPCC’s comprehensive findings. He might only review one small part of one study that later becomes one small input to the published IPCC report. Far from endorsing the IPCC reports, some reviewers, offended at what they considered a sham review process, have demanded that the IPCC remove their names from the list of reviewers. One even threatened legal action when the IPCC refused.
A great many scientists, without doubt, are four-square in their support of the IPCC. A great many others are not. A petition organized by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine between 1999 and 2001 claimed some 17,800 scientists in opposition to the Kyoto Protocol. A more recent indicator comes from the U.S.-based National Registry of Environmental Professionals, an accrediting organization whose 12,000 environmental practitioners have standing with U.S. government agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy. In a November, 2006, survey of its members, it found that only 59% think human activities are largely responsible for the warming that has occurred, and only 39% make their priority the curbing of carbon emissions. And 71% believe the increase in hurricanes is likely natural, not easily attributed to human activities.
Such diversity of views is also present in the wider scientific community, as seen in the World Federation of Scientists, an organization formed during the Cold War to encourage dialogue among scientists to prevent nuclear catastrophe. The federation, which encompasses many of the world’s most eminent scientists and today represents more than 10,000 scientists, now focuses on 15 “planetary emergencies,” among them water, soil, food, medicine and biotechnology, and climatic changes. Within climatic changes, there are eight priorities, one being “Possible human influences on climate and on atmospheric composition and chemistry (e.g. increased greenhouse gases and tropospheric ozone).”
Man-made global warming deserves study, the World Federation of Scientists believes, but so do other serious climatic concerns. So do 14 other planetary emergencies. That seems about right. – Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute and Consumer Policy Institute, divisions of Energy Probe Research Foundation. Email: LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com.
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I have finally seen Bush predicating his actions on polls and conventional wisdom. Needless to say, I am disappointed. The action I refer to is his new opinion taken on global warming that was given to him by this same coventional wisdom. Also, I have my beliefs on immigration, and they certainly do not coincide with his. I would crack down on employers and landlords to the extent that they would not dare break the law; then I would encourage the border agents to do their jobs, and not prosecute them. I am beginning to wonder who runs the inJustice Department. Is it Sutton, Fitzgerald, and a few other reprobates? It is not only this administration – there hasn’t been an adequate Attorney General since Ed Meese during the Reagan administration.
Vermonters – wanting to secede from the Union by 13 percent… I am all for it. The actions of their judges and legislatures couldn’t be more out of touch with the average American. I am sure they would have child molesters entering their country to seek asylum. If New York and Massachusetts each chose to dump all their garbage in Vermont, would the Vermont military be able to stop them? I guess they think they wouldn’t be under any threat of terrorism, and wouldn’t need any protection by the U.S. in that venue. You know they could be right. Their land values and housing values would rise by all the demand to live their by al-Qaeda. I guess they think Abraham Lincoln was wrong to try to retain the Union. Can’t you just imagine Osama Bin Laden hiding in one of their barns, pretending to be a milk maid?
Do you suppose the Democrats will lead the charge and enlist the media to help them put William Jefferson away like they did to Scooter Libby and Mark Foley? They will probably handle this the way they did Pockets Berger and Harry Reid. I see where Mrs. Clinton and Obama bragged about voting against supporting the troops. If you think Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, Les Aspen, was wrong when he refused help to Black Hawk Down in Somalia and got 19 soldiers killed, what makes you think these two could be counted on? At least Edwards would sue.
