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Mood:  cool
Topic: Lib Loser Stories

Poor Enviro-marxists...

Consensus dissipating on global warming?

By Ed Morrissey • Hot Air.com

Global-warming skepticism has apparently gone mainstream enough to get the attention of Politico. On the cusp of getting the most progressive Congressional leadership in history, the science used to argue for central control of energy production may disappear along with the warming that by all accounts stopped ten years ago:

Climate change skeptics on Capitol Hill are quietly watching a growing accumulation of global cooling science and other findings that could signal that the science behind global warming may still be too shaky to warrant cap-and-trade legislation.

While the new Obama administration promises aggressive, forward-thinking environmental policies, Weather Channel co-founder Joseph D’Aleo and other scientists are organizing lobbying efforts to take aim at the cap-and-trade bill that Democrats plan to unveil in January. ...

The National Academy of Sciences and most major scientific bodies agree that global warming is caused by man-made carbon emissions. But a small, growing number of scientists, including D’Aleo, are questioning how quickly the warming is happening and whether humans are actually the leading cause.

Armed with statistics from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climate Data Center, D’Aleo reported in the 2009 Old Farmer’s Almanac that the U.S. annual mean temperature has fluctuated for decades and has only risen 0.21 degrees since 1930 — which he says is caused by fluctuating solar activity levels and ocean temperatures, not carbon emissions.

Data from the same source shows that during five of the past seven decades, including this one, average U.S. temperatures have gone down. And the almanac predicted that the next year will see a period of cooling.

The global-warming movement exists to provide cover for statists who demand central control over energy production. That’s an inconvenient truth that has begun to emerge as global temperatures fail to meet expectations of increase. Rather than admit that more research is needed, global-warming activists have increased the hysterical tone of their efforts, demanding immediate action and giving dire predictions of catastrophe without it.

Their cause did not get helped by the Goddard Institute’s mishandling of data. Not only did they mistakenly use the wrong month’s data, they failed to catch the error before publication. In the controversy that erupted, Goddard — the primary source for the most hysterical global-warming advocates — admitted that they don’t do any independent verification of the data they receive, making their conclusions all but worthless.

Over 31,000 scientists have now signed onto the Global Warming Petition Project, demanding more skepticism and a return to scientific inquiry into climate change rather than political propaganda. They face an uphill battle in convincing the beneficiaries of research dollars from Washington to risk their funding by acting like scientists.

Hot Air.com ~ Ed Morrissey ** Consensus dissipating on global warming?
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