Al Gore, Call Your Office: Climate Alarmist Says there’s no Alarm

Global warming is a tough issue for laymen.  Learned people strut about saying that the science is conclusive, done, finished.  The world is destined for disaster.

But embarrassing contrary peer-reviewed studies then float by, as independent experts pull the curtain back, revealing the machinations of the alarmist lobby.  Rather like the Wizard of Oz, Al Gore & Co. say pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, whooping and wheezing about the end of the world.

If the science really is settled, you’d think the alarmists would leap at the chance to prove it.  But Lawrence Solomon recently found just the contrary.  When pressed on the issue, his alarmist opponent ran in the other direction.

Writes Solomon, author of The Deniers:

It was a global warming debate hosted by a pillar of the American establishment and my opponent was a respected scientist representing one of the most authoritative organizations in the field. I was there to dispute the conventional wisdom that the science is settled on climate.

No sooner did the debate start than I felt as if I had stumbled onto a set for Alice in Wonderland.

“I really detest phrases like the science is settled,” asserted Dr. Jay Gulledge, a climate specialist at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in his opening statement. “To characterize myself and the Pew Center as viewing the science as settled is a bit of a red herring.”

What an odd way for Jay to begin a debate, I thought (Jay and I were on a first-name basis). The only ones who claim that the science is settled are Al Gore and those who side with him — not the sceptics. Is Jay saying he detests the arguments made by those on his side of the debate?But Jay’s comments were stranger still to anyone who knows the Pew Center. Like just everyone else on his side of the debate — from the world governments meeting this week at Poznan, Poland to the authors of the Ontario Climate Change Action Plan — the Pew Center paints the science as settled by claiming that an overwhelming number of scientists are overwhelmingly in agreement on the need for dramatic action to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the exception being scientists in the pay of industry.

Well, now. maybe the world isn’t ending.  That’s very good to hear.  Please Al, remind us again why we are supposed to wreck the economy as part of an emergency campaign to halt climate change.