Even the Times Can't Ignore It

The New York Times, yes the New York Times, today runs an article critical of Al Gore and his global warming hyperventilating. You know the wheels are about to fall off when the Times starts running stories critical of the global warming crusaders. My favorite part:

Other critics have zeroed in on Mr. Gore’s claim that the energy industry ran a “disinformation campaign” that produced false discord on global warming. The truth, he said, was that virtually all unbiased scientists agreed that humans were the main culprits. But Benny J. Peiser, a social anthropologist in Britain who runs the Cambridge-Conference Network, or CCNet, an Internet newsletter on climate change and natural disasters, challenged the claim of scientific consensus with examples of pointed disagreement.

“Hardly a week goes by,” Dr. Peiser said, “without a new research paper that questions part or even some basics of climate change theory,” including some reports that offer alternatives to human activity for global warming.

Geologists have documented age upon age of climate swings, and some charge Mr. Gore with ignoring such rhythms.

“Nowhere does Mr. Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet,” Robert M. Carter, a marine geologist at James Cook University in Australia, said in a September blog. “Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change.”

In October, Dr. Easterbrook made similar points at the geological society meeting in Philadelphia. He hotly disputed Mr. Gore’s claim that “our civilization has never experienced any environmental shift remotely similar to this” threatened change.

Nonsense, Dr. Easterbrook told the crowded session. He flashed a slide that showed temperature trends for the past 15,000 years. It highlighted 10 large swings, including the medieval warm period. These shifts, he said, were up to “20 times greater than the warming in the past century.”

Getting personal, he mocked Mr. Gore’s assertion that scientists agreed on global warming except those industry had corrupted. “I’ve never been paid a nickel by an oil company,” Dr. Easterbrook told the group. “And I’m not a Republican.”

Ouch! I've always been fascinated with the weather and have been skeptical of the claim that global warming is caused by humans. I don't doubt we play a factor in some shape, form, or fashion -- but how much is of course the 64 Million Dollar Question. Unfortunetly the debate has become too politicized and so much money is at stake for research, that many claims by scientists with a vested interest in proving the existence of man-made global warming are dubious at best. We simply do not understand enough about how our atmosphere works to make such unequivocal conclusions.

It appears as though Al Gore may have reached his high water mark with his Oscar for An Inconvient Truth. When global warming's True Believers start viewing skeptics as the equivalent of Holocaust deniers, thankfully that's when cooler heads begin to prevail.

Kudos to the New York Times for this fine article, something I don't get to say often enough.