Hypocisy of New York Times and Liberals

It is a source of great pleasure for me to expose the junk science Al Gore pedals in An Inconvenient Truth. I didn’t do any of the research myself, I just combed the Internet to see what Al Gore’s other invention can tell us about man-made Global Warming. One of my posts (click on this link for Al Gore Finds Truth Inconvenient) covers two glaring omissions of Al Gore’s contribution to scientific mythology.

The first is the amount of increase in sea levels by 2100. While Al Gore claims 20 feet, reputable scientists that have nothing to do with Global Warming “denial” predict that the worst case is a rise of less than 18 inches. Since sea levels have been rising seven inches or more per century for hundreds of thousands of years, it looked to me like Al Gore was left with 19 feet in his mouth.

Then Al Gore regaled us with his “hockey stick” chart of temperature trends the past thousand, yea even two thousand, years. The most notable thing about Al’s hockey stick is not what is shows, but what it omits, in this case the two most significant climate events of the past thousand years, the Medieval Warm Period and The Little Ice Age.

These are just two of many flaws in Al Gore’s Global Warming “science,” and indicate to me that the issue is still debatable.

However, it looks like people in high places are trying to use their political clout to cut off debate. Two prominent Senators, Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and Jay Rockefeller, D-WV, sent an October 30 letter to ExxonMobil CEO, Rex Tillerson, insisting he end Exxon’s funding of a "climate change denial campaign."

When I read of this, my first reaction was, “We don’t do that sort of thing in America.” I had heard that Leftist politicians in Europe called for Global Warming dissenters to be arrested and prosecuted. That doesn’t surprise me. It’s the sort of thing I expect from the Left in Europe, which has no tradition of freedom of speech and the press, or of academic freedom. However, we not only have those traditions in the United States, the elements of these freedoms are firmly embedded in our Constitution.

In fact, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and other bastions of Liberalism have recently decried the arrest and prosecution of journalists for their role in hiding the identities of informers who give them unauthorized disclosures of classified information. It would seem that such protectors of freedom would be outraged by two Senators attempting to muzzle dissent.

That’s how it would seem to me, anyway, unless the self-anointed guardians of our personal liberties and academic freedom were not colossal hypocrites.

It came as a shock to me then, to find that it wasn’t our champions of a free press or academic freedom that made an issue of the Senators’ attack on our fundamental liberties, but British Lord Monckton, Viscount of Brenchley, who demanded they “uphold free speech or resign.”

The following is the PR Newswire release that reported the outrage Lord Monckton expressed a month and a half after the senators sent their letter. As far as I have been able to determine, Lord Monckton has not been joined by any prominent American politicians or journalists in protesting the senators’ attack on our freedom.

The hypocrisy of the Left is evidenced by their deafening silence on this attack on our fundamental freedoms by these two Liberal icons.

British Lord Stings Senators Rockefeller and Snowe: "Uphold Free Speech or Resign" Dec 18 4:58 AM US/Eastern

WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Lord Monckton, Viscount of Brenchley, has sent an open letter to Senators Rockefeller (D-WV) and Snowe (R-Maine) in response to their recent open letter telling the CEO of ExxonMobil to cease funding climate-skeptic scientists.

Lord Monckton, former policy adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, writes: "You defy every tenet of democracy when you invite ExxonMobil to deny itself the right to provide information to ‘senior elected and appointed government officials’ who disagree with your opinion."

In what The Charleston (WV) Daily Mail has called "an intemperate attempt to squelch debate with a hint of political consequences," Senators Rockefeller and Snowe released an open letter dated October 30 to ExxonMobil CEO, Rex Tillerson, insisting he end Exxon’s funding of a "climate change denial campaign." The Senators labeled scientists with whom they disagree as "deniers," a term usually directed at "Holocaust deniers."

Some voices on the political left have called for the arrest and prosecution of skeptical scientists. The British Foreign Secretary has said skeptics should be treated like advocates of Islamic terror and must be denied access to the media.

Responds Lord Monckton, "Skeptics and those who have the courage to support them are actually helpful in getting the science right. They do not, as you improperly suggest, ‘obfuscate’ the issue: they assist in clarifying it by challenging weaknesses in the ‘consensus’ argument and they compel necessary corrections ... "

Lord Monckton’s Churchillian reproof continues, "You acknowledge the effectiveness of the climate skeptics. In so doing, you pay a compliment to the courage of those free-thinking scientists who continue to research climate change independently despite the likelihood of refusal of publication in journals that have taken preconceived positions; the hate mail and vilification from ignorant environmentalists; and the threat of loss of tenure in institutions of learning which no longer make any pretence to uphold or cherish academic freedom."

Of Britain’s Royal Society, a State-funded scientific body which, like the Senators, has publicly leaned on ExxonMobil, Lord Monckton said, "The Society’s long-standing funding by taxpayers does not ensure any greater purity of motive or rigor of thought than industrial funding of scientists who dare to question whether ‘climate change’ will do any harm."

To the Senators’ comparison of ExxonMobil‘s funding of climate skeptics with tobacco-industry funding of research denying the link between smoking and lung cancer, Lord Monckton counters, "Your comparison of Exxon’s funding of skeptical scientists and groups with the former antics of the tobacco industry is unjustifiable and unworthy of any credible elected representatives. Either withdraw that monstrous comparison forthwith, or resign so as not to pollute the office you hold."

Concludes Lord Monckton, "I challenge you to withdraw or resign because your letter is the latest in what appears to be an internationally-coordinated series of maladroit and malevolent attempts to silence the voices of scientists and others who have sound grounds, rooted firmly in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, to question what you would have us believe is the unanimous agreement of scientists worldwide that global warming will lead to what you excitedly but unjustifiably call ‘disastrous’ and ‘calamitous’ consequences."

SOURCE Center for Science and Public Policy

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