The Problem With Obama

Posts Tagged ‘Copenhagen’

Gover­nor Palin writes the fol­low­ing in the Wash­ing­ton Post:

With the pub­li­ca­tion of dam­ag­ing e-​mails from a cli­mate research cen­ter in Britain, the rad­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal move­ment appears to face a tip­ping point. The rev­e­la­tion of appalling actions by so-​called cli­mate change experts allows the Amer­i­can pub­lic to finally under­stand the con­cerns so many of us have artic­u­lated on this issue.

“Climate-​gate,” as the e-​mails and other doc­u­ments from the Cli­mate Research Unit at the Uni­ver­sity of East Anglia have become known, exposes a highly politi­cized sci­en­tific cir­cle — the same cir­cle whose work under­lies efforts at the Copen­hagen cli­mate change con­fer­ence. The agenda-​driven poli­cies being pushed in Copen­hagen won’t change the weather, but they would change our econ­omy for the worse.

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Copenhagen’s polit­i­cal sci­ence (Wash­ing­ton Post)
Gov­er­nor Palin again calls for Barack Obama to skip Copen­hagen in this Wash­ing­ton Post com­men­tary. She points to the need for real sci­ence, bal­anc­ing real-​world costs and ben­e­fits, and the inequitable pro­pos­als and expec­tions among nations.

Gover­nor Sarah Palin on Climategate:

The president’s deci­sion to attend the inter­na­tional cli­mate con­fer­ence in Copen­hagen needs to be recon­sid­ered in light of the unfold­ing Cli­mate­gate scan­dal. The leaked e-​mails involved in Cli­mate­gate expose the unsci­en­tific behav­ior of lead­ing cli­mate sci­en­tists who delib­er­ately destroyed records to block infor­ma­tion requests, manip­u­lated data to “hide the decline” in global tem­per­a­tures, and con­spired to silence the crit­ics of man-​made global warm­ing. I sup­port Sen­a­tor James Inhofe’s call for a full inves­ti­ga­tion into this scan­dal. Because it involves many of the same per­son­al­i­ties and enti­ties behind the Copen­hagen con­fer­ence, Cli­mate­gate calls into ques­tion many of the pro­pos­als being pushed there, includ­ing any­thing that would lead to a cap and tax plan. Pol­icy should be based on sound sci­ence, not snake oil. I took a stand against such snake oil sci­ence when I sued the fed­eral gov­ern­ment over its deci­sion to list the polar bear as an endan­gered species despite the fact that the polar bear pop­u­la­tion has increased. I’ve never denied the real­ity of cli­mate change; in fact, I was the first gov­er­nor to cre­ate a sub­cab­i­net posi­tion to deal specif­i­cally with the issue. I saw the impact of chang­ing weather pat­terns first­hand while serv­ing as gov­er­nor of our only Arc­tic state. But while we rec­og­nize the effects of chang­ing water lev­els, ero­sion pat­terns, and glacial ice melt, we can­not pri­mar­ily blame man’s activ­i­ties for the earth’s cycli­cal weather changes. The dras­tic eco­nomic mea­sures being pushed by dog­matic envi­ron­men­tal­ists won’t change the weather, but will dra­mat­i­cally change our econ­omy for the worse. Pol­icy deci­sions require real sci­ence and real solu­tions, not junk sci­ence and dooms­day scare tac­tics pushed by an envi­ron­men­tal priest­hood that cap­i­tal­izes on the public’s worry and makes them feel that own­ing an SUV is a “sin” against the planet. In his inau­gural address, Pres­i­dent Obama declared his inten­tion to “restore sci­ence to its right­ful place.” Boy­cotting Copen­hagen while this scan­dal is thor­oughly inves­ti­gated would send a strong mes­sage that the United States gov­ern­ment will not be a party to fraud­u­lent sci­en­tific prac­tices. Say­ing no to Copen­hagen and cap and tax are first steps in “restor­ing sci­ence to its right­ful place.

‘Climate­gate’ puts warm­ing in ques­tion (Detroit News)
A cau­tion­ary edi­to­r­ial sug­gest­ing that Obama’s upcom­ing trip to sign away America’s future at Copen­hagen is not only pre­ma­ture, but based on ques­tion­able and now dis­cred­ited scientific.

George Mar­shall writes in the block Cli­mate Change Denial a post bemoan­ing “Swift­boat­ing the Cli­mate Sci­en­tists.”

The theft of 1,000 pri­vate e-​mails from the Cli­mate Research Unit at the Uni­ver­sity of East Anglia (UEA) shows that deniers have learned lessons from dirty pol­i­tics and are run­ning a new cam­paign to under­mine pub­lic trust in cli­mate sci­en­tists. The fee­ble response from the UEA and the cli­mate sci­ence com­mu­nity shows that sci­en­tists are still totally under­es­ti­mat­ing the fragility of that trust and the cru­cial role it plays in build­ing pub­lic belief.

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