UC Professor: Global warming scam "the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist"

On Friday, The Washington Post dutifully ran an uncontested (and I might add, pathetically whiney) opinion piece from Penn State meteorology professor Michael Mann assailing the "anti-science bent" of current political discourse.  What the Post completely ignored was the resignation of a sixty-seven year member of the American Physical Society over the corruption of science that has been propagated by the once esteemed organization. (The American Institute of Physics has an excellent oral history interview with Professor Lewis here.)

The letter is so compelling that James Delingpole at The Telegraph (UK) has elected to reproduce it in its entirety and without further comment, as have I:

From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara
To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society
6 October 2010
Dear Curt:

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence---it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d'être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford's book organizes the facts very well.) I don't believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:

1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate

2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer "explanatory" screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.

3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.

4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind---simply to bring the subject into the open.

5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members' interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.

6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.

APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?

I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people's motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don't think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I'm not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.

I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.

Hal

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President's Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)

Senate puts lipstick on cap and trade; states not impressed

I have written extensively about climate change legislation over the last two years, and you can easily search this site by entering "cap and trade" "climategate" or "EPA carbon" to read those entries, if you are so inclined.  The conventional wisdom in recent months has been that cap and trade legislation is permanently stalled in the Senate in the wake of leaked emails from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (aka Climategate), multiple erroneous or fraudulent data citations from the U.N. IPCC, and the worst economy since the Great Depression.  Don't believe it.  From The Financial Times (UK):

Three senior US lawmakers are piecing together a sweeping bipartisan energy and climate bill, which looks set to include sweeteners to galvanise support among Republicans and industry groups.

The proposed legislation, encouraged by President Barack Obama, dilutes a climate bill that stalled last year in the Senate. The senators have hosted meetings with industry groups over the past two weeks, revealing details about their plan that would cap carbon emissions while expanding offshore oil drilling and nuclear power generation.

Nearly six months have passed since the Senate’s last climate bill failed to win over conservatives and moderates, a political stalemate that cast a shadow on America’s presence at the Copenhagen climate summit. But some Democrats say the passage of healthcare reform has opened the door for climate change legislation, while acknowledging tradeoffs will be needed to secure 60 Senate votes. “They know that to pass a comprehensive bill they will have to ease concerns of some special interests and mid-western senators whose states have manufacturing-oriented economies,” said Daniel J. Weiss, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a liberal think-tank.

Environmental groups are divided over the bill, with some decrying the push to pre-empt existing state and federal greenhouse gas regulations. But many moderate groups are withholding judgment until the bill is introduced, saying concessions to industry bodies will be necessary. According to people briefed by the senators, the bill aims to cut carbon emissions from 2005 levels by 17 per cent by 2020 and 80 per cent by 2050, largely by implementing separate caps on utilities and manufacturers. The federal government would sell separate pollution permits to each sector, using a “hard price collar” to limit greenhouse gas allowances to between $10 (£6.70) and $30 per ton, and committing to flood the market with credits if the price ceiling is exceeded.

The bill’s sponsors – John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat, Joseph Lieberman, the Independent from Connecticut, and Lindsay Graham, the South Carolina Republican – said the new sectoral approach would begin imposing carbon caps on utilities in 2012 and manufacturers in 2016.

If legislative initiatives fail, the Obama administration will certainly fall back to its backup plan of using the unelected regulatory agencies of the federal government to do his bidding.  Thankfully, the States are already mobilized to block this statist effort:

Illinois state Rep. Dan Reitz, a Democrat and a former coal miner, is worried that pending federal climate change rules will cripple the economy, and he wants Congress to step in and stop it.

Reitz, who represents the 116th District in southern Illinois, launched his own assault against U.S. EPA climate rules when he introduced a resolution urging Congress to postpone greenhouse gas regulations for factories, power plants and other so-called stationary emission sources. The Illinois House approved his resolution earlier this month.

"I believe that Congress should adopt legislation if we're going to regulate greenhouse gases from stationary sources," Reitz said in an interview. "We should be able to do that within the context of a bill and not do it within the regulatory measures that are out there right now."

Reitz is among at least 25 legislators in 17 states who have introduced measures aimed at blocking or limiting EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases. Five of those bills came from Democrats.

At least seven such measures have been adopted. In addition to Reitz's resolution in Illinois, legislators in Alabama, Kansas, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah have passed measures encouraging Congress to step in and block EPA climate rules or for the agency to halt its regulatory plans.

EPA this week is planning to issue the first national greenhouse gas standards for automobiles, a rule that will ultimately require the agency to regulate stationary sources' emissions of the heat-trapping gases. The Supreme Court ordered EPA in 2007 to determine whether greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health. EPA did so last year, paving the way for new emission rules.

The Obama administration and environmentalists argue EPA is compelled by the law and by science to begin clamping down on the emissions. EPA officials insist that they can do it in a way that won't cripple the economy.

Reitz, an elected Democratic legislator and former coal miner from the President's home state of Illinois has the audacity to challenge federal climate change regulations.  That shows personal courage and gives me hope for our Republic.

Call your Representatives and Senators and tell them to vote "no" on the new and improved cap and tax.

More incompetence at the IPCC

The Netherlands environmental chief is upset about another goof-up from UN climate reporting.  From Expatica:

This morning's nrc.next reports that Environment Minister Jacqueline Cramer is up in arms about yet another mistake made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Its report says that 55 percent of the Netherlands is under sea level, but the figure should be just 26 percent.

The government's own number-crunchers have told the minister that the IPCC made the mistake by simply adding the 29 percent of the country which is at risk of flooding by major rivers.

Ms Cramer is deeply unhappy about the blunder: "I frame policy in the light of science," she explains. "Trust in science and politics has taken a knock". However, she is still convinced that "the climate is changing, the earth is warming up and it is probably being caused by man".

Rob Kievet at Radio Netherlands Worldwide spells out the mistake:

The incorrect figures which date back to 2007 were revealed on Wednesday by weekly Vrij Nederland. The Dutch Living Environment Planning Agency told reporters that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) added two figures supplied by the agency: the area of the Netherlands which is below sea-level and the area which is susceptible to flooding. In fact, these areas overlap, so the figures should not have been combined to produce the 55 percent quoted by the IPCC.

If the environment minister frames her policy "in the light of science," why did it take her three years to spot this huge and obvious error?  Perhaps her feigned indignation is more politics than policy.

The major industrialised area, which includes Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht, is home to three million people and produces two-thirds of the country's gross domestic product. And, much of the area is metres below sea-level. Its 59 local authorities have now put together a joint action plan to deal with a flooding disaster.

In a related article, the paper points out that, despite these stark facts, the average Dutch resident is not all that bothered about global warming. On a list of people's top worries, climate change comes in tenth at best.

Emphasis mine.  The Dutch are getting wise to the climate change hoax.  Americans are too.

Shock: world misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown

In the latest fracture in the scientific consensus surrounding climate change, the U.N. is expected to retract its warning that most of the Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035.  From the London Times (UK):

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.



In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report.


It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was "speculation" and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change.

This follows a report last week in which the Met Office (the UK's national weather service) denounced research from the Copenhagen summit which suggested that global warming could raise sea levels by 6ft by 2100.

The Climategate scandal which rocked the Copenhagen Climate Summit in December reared its head again on Friday when the Wall Steet Journal revealed that Michael Mann, an American scientist at the center of the controversy had received more than half a million dollars in stimulus money to conduct climate change research.  The National Center for Public Policy Research issued a press release Thursday asking that these funds be returned:

In the face of rising unemployment and record-breaking deficits, policy experts at the National Center for Public Policy Research are criticizing the Obama Administration for awarding a half million dollar grant from the economic stimulus package to Penn State Professor Michael Mann, a key figure in the Climategate controversy.



"It's outrageous that economic stimulus money is being used to support research conducted by Michael Mann at the very time he's under investigation by Penn State and is one of the key figures in the international Climategate scandal. Penn State should immediately return these funds to the U.S. Treasury," said Tom Borelli, Ph.D., director of the National Center's Free Enterprise Project.


Professor Mann is currently under investigation by Penn State University because of activities related to a closed circle of climate scientists who appear to have been engaged in agenda-driven science. Emails and documents mysteriously released from the previously-prestigious Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom revealed discussions of manipulation and destruction of research data, as well as efforts to interfere with the peer review process to stifle opposing views. The motivation underlying these efforts appears to be a coordinated strategy to support the belief that mankind's activities are causing global warming.

Even more astonishing is the revelation that Penn State received an additional $1.9 million stimulus grant just last week:

A nearly $1.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation is enabling a Penn State-led group of researchers to continue studies on the potential effects of climate change on the spread of infectious diseases, such as malaria and dengue. The grant is part of federal stimulus funding authorized under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Noel Sheppard at the Wall Street Journal pointedly questions the rationale for this latest award:

This grant appears to have nothing to do with Mann's department. However, given the high-profile the university is currently under as a result of his involvement in ClimateGate, it seems absurd that any federal funds involving climate change would be going to this school while it is investigating its chief proponent of this myth.

Maybe more importantly, why are economic stimulus funds being given to a university for scientific research in the first place, especially one with such political overtones?

I guess it would be pointless to ask how many jobs Penn State will create with this $1.9 million.

Armed U.N. Security guards silence veteran journalist in Copenhagen

In October, filmmaker Phelim McAleer had the audacity to ask Al Gore if he planned to correct nine significant errors found in his movie An Inconvenient Truth.  Fellow journalists at the environmental conference where the question was asked moved in to try to silence Mr. McAleer.  When he persisted, they turned off his microphone.

You can see the whole thing as exposed by Fox News on this youtube video.



Mr. McAleer's freedom of speech was squelched again in Copenhagen, only this time a prominent Stanford professor was on the receiving end of the questions and armed United Nations security personnel were called in to silence Mr. McAleer.  Editor-in-chief, Mike Flynn at Big Government reports:

A Stanford Professor has used United Nation security officers to silence a journalist asking him “inconvenient questions” during a press briefing at the climate change conference in Copenhagen.



Professor Stephen Schneider’s assistant requested armed UN security officers who held film maker Phelim McAleer, ordered him to stop filming and prevented further questioning after the press conference where the Stanford academic was launching a book. [snip]

McAleer, a veteran journalist and film maker, has recently made a documentary “Not Evil Just Wrong’ which takes a sceptical look at the science and politics behind Global Warming concerns.



He asked Professor Schneider about his opinions on Climategate – where leaked emails have revealed that a senior British professor deleted data and encouraged colleagues to do likewise if it contradicted their belief in Global Warming.


Professor Phil Jones, the head of Britain’s Climate Research Unit, has temporarily stood down pending an investigation into the scandal.


Professor Schneider, who is a senior member of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said he would not comment on emails that may have been incomplete or edited.


During some testy exchanges with McAleer, UN officials and Professor Schneider’s assistants twice tried to cut short McAleer’s question.


However as the press conference drew to a close Professor Schneider’s assistant called armed UN security guards to the room. They held McAleer and aggressively ordered cameraman Ian Foster to stop filming. The guard threatened to take away the camera and expel the film crew from the conference if they did not obey his instructions to stop filming Professor Schneider.

The trailer for McAleer's documentary, Not Evil Just Wrong is reproduced below.  You can also watch the trailer and order the documentary here.



Mr. McAleer might want to reconsider his magnanimous title. I would have called it Completely Evil, Ignorant and Wrong.

Climategate: Last horse crosses the finish line

ABC news finally got around to mentioning the Climategate scandal after more than two weeks of broadcast silence on the subject.  Newsbusters has been following this virtual news blackout since the beginning, and had this to say:

More than two weeks after ClimateGate broke, ABC's World News finally got around to mentioning it on Sunday evening, but not to explore how the e-mails discredited leading scientists who insist mankind is causing global warming as, instead, ABC declared “the science is solid” and NBC assured viewers “the evidence is overwhelming that man is behind climate change.”



ABC reporter Clayton Sandell merely included, in a larger story about the Copenhagen conference, how “global warming naysayers are claiming that e-mails stolen from” East Anglia University “show climate scientists discussing how to fudge results to promote the idea that humans are altering the planet.” After failing to inform viewers of any specifics the e-mails revealed, Sandell, who didn't utter a syllable about them on Sunday's Good Morning America, concluded his World News piece:


The science is solid, according to a vast majority of researchers, with hotter temperatures, melting glaciers, and rising sea level providing the proof.

Well all righty then.  With unabashed advocates like ABC, NBC and CBS, who needs lobbyists?

CBS Reports ClimateGate During Show Preempted By Football

What's a network to do when it is forced to confront an inconvenient truth like Climategate?  Preempt it.

Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters reports that CBS has finally joined NBC in crossing the news blackout picket line.  Too bad virtually nobody actually saw it:

CBS on Saturday finally covered the growing ClimateGate scandal, but did so when its "Evening News" program was going to be preempted by college football in most of the country.



With the SEC Championship game between the University of Florida and Alabama starting at 4PM EST, few would see CBS's report on this controversy unless they read an article at the network's website.


There, the video of the segment was available with the surprising caption "Climate Change a Hoax?"


According to LexisNexis, anchor Jeff Glor teased the story before a commercial break, "Just ahead on tonight`s CBS EVENING NEWS -- did some scientists fudge the numbers to make climate change look worse than it is."

Here's the video that you would have seen, if silly CBS didn' choose to broadcast the SEC championship game (between the top two teams in the nation) instead: 


Watch CBS News Videos Online
 
It should come as no surpise, that ABC still remains silent.

Russian server implicated in Climategate email leak?

Two British newspapers are reporting that the original internet posting of emails and documents stolen from the University of East Anglia Climate Reasearch Institute was initiated from a small server in the Siberian city of Tomsk.  From the Daily Mail (UK):

Suspicions were growing last night that Russian security services were behind the leaking of the notorious British ‘Climategate’ emails which threaten to undermine tomorrow’s Copenhagen global warming summit.



An investigation by The Mail on Sunday has discovered that the explosive hacked emails from the University of East Anglia were leaked via a small web server in the formerly closed city of Tomsk in Siberia.


The leaks scandal has left the scientific community in disarray after claims that key climate change data was manipulated in the run-up to the climate change summit of world leaders.

The Times (UK) offers three possible sources:

The Russian connection to the controversy over the leaked Climategate e-mails raises suspicions of a state-sanctioned attempt to discredit the Copenhagen summit involving secret service espionage. But it could as easily have been the work of freelance hackers hired by climate-change sceptics.



Hackers for hire are a common phenomenon in Russia, where programming skills are high and many smart computer experts are eager to make money. A shadowy organisation called the Russian Business Network is notorious as a provider of internet services for global cyber-crime.


Unscrupulous businesses hire hackers to attack the websites of rival companies, and criminal gangs make use of their skills in credit card fraud and identity theft. There are websites and discussion forums where Russian hackers swap information and advice about their activities.


A third possibility is that disgruntled or mischievous students involved in the climate-change debate may have accessed the servers; it has been suggested that the files hacked from the University of East Anglia were uploaded from a server in the Russian city of Tomsk. The formerly closed Siberian city was a hotbed of scientific expertise in the Soviet Union and is now one of Russia’s leading centres for studying climate change.

Russia has been associated with several cyber attacks in recent years:

Tomsk students were involved in an attack on a website sympathetic to Chechen militants in 2002 that drew praise from the Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the Soviet-era KGB. The FSB office in Tomsk declared the students’ action an “expression of their position as citizens, one worthy of respect”.



The Kremlin was blamed when government websites in Estonia and Georgia were crippled by so-called distributed-denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks carried out by computer hackers when those two countries were in conflict with Russia. The cyber-saboteurs used automated “botnets” to flood networks with simultaneous attempts to access sites. An MP with Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party boasted later that one of his researchers had carried out the attack on Estonia.


Security experts in Russia say that the FSB routinely makes use of such “hacker-patriots” when it wants to break into computer systems or damage websites belonging to groups critical of the state. This allows it to have deniability about the involvement of its own computer experts at the FSB’s Centre for Information Security.

And just last year, computer hackers suspected of working from Russia successfully penetrated Pentagon computer systems within U.S. Central Command in one of the most severe cyber attacks on US military networks.

This story hasn't gained much traction yet, perhaps because it broke during the weekend, or maybe it's simply not true.  Stay tuned.

Brian Williams of NBC breaks the Climategate blackout

In an earlier post today, I wondered if the U.N. announcement that it would be launching an investigation into the leaked emails from East Anglia would prompt the mainstream media to finally report on the Climategate scandal.  NBC is a winner!  Sort of.  From Newsbusters this evening:

Two weeks after the scandal broke, NBC Nightly News on Friday night became the first broadcast network morning or evening news program to inform viewers about “ClimateGate,” but only in the most cursory manner as correspondent Anne Thompson, a long-time ally of the environmental left, despaired the e-mails may end up “giving politicians from coal and oil-producing states another reason to delay taking action to reduce emissions. The government's leading scientist told Congress there is no time to lose.”

Anchor Brian Williams had teased: “ClimateGate, they're calling it. A new scandal over global warming and it's burning up the Internet. Have the books been cooked on climate change?” But neither Williams nor Thompson ever again used the “ClimateGate” term as Thompson's story assured viewers the threat remains while she saw -- not a major scientific scandal -- but merely how “those who doubt that manmade greenhouse gases are changing the climate say” the e-mails “show climate scientists massaging data and suppressing studies by those who disagree.”

Thompson, who in 2007 declared “the scientific debate is no longer over society's role in global warming. It is now a matter of degrees,” allowed soundbites from a Republican Congressman and Patrick Michaels of the Cato Institute, but countered with how “25 leading U.S. scientists accused climate change opponents of misrepresenting the e-mails' significance” and, after a clip of left-wing activist Michael Oppenheimer, she fretted over how, as quoted above, the e-mails will “delay” vital action. Thompson concluded with NOAA's administrator: “Climate change is not a theory. It is a documented set of observations about the world.”

Great thinkers like Copernicus and Galileo would have likely withered under an assault like this invasion of the global warming body snatchers.  It's time for the true scientists and truth seekers of the world to stand up to this parasitic, economically destructive, self-serving cabal.