Number of global warming 'skeptics' is growing

If you can, please read this Wall Street Journal article about the growing skepticism over human-caused global warming. (subscription may be required)

It starts with the story of Steve Fielding who recently asked the Obama administration to "reassure him" on the issue of global warming. When that didn't happen, he decided to vote against the pending legislation.

But he's an Australian senator and he's part of a growing group of individuals who are expressing their doubts about the so-called 'consensus' on man-made global warming.

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)

The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality.

The U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on the Waxman-Markey global warming bill today. If you haven't already done so, call your legislator and tell them to vote no. We cannot afford the huge increases in costs just to reduce the temperature a fraction of a degree - if that.

Americans for Prosperity has a nice web tool to enter your zip code and get your representative's contact information. They also have a listing of where various reps stand on the issue. Please call today.