PrintMarch 2, 2007
Global warming's intellectual dissidents
The oxymoronic "scientific consensus" claimed on global warming has generated its own intellectual dissidents. Not (yet) consigned to gulags in Alaska, but threatened with decertification by the American Meteorological Society, if a TV weather girl gets her way, and loss of position as state climatologist in a couple of states, the hearty band of dissidents continues to speak truth to power, to appropriate one of the left's favorites slogans.
The latest example to come my way is Professor Bob Giegengack of the University of Pennsylvania. A surprisingly positive profile of Dr. Giegengack comes from Philadelphia Magazine. Here is an excerpt:
...Bob Giegengack... has described Al Gore's documentary as "a political statement timed to present him as a presidential candidate in 2008." And he added, "The glossy production is replete with inaccuracies and misrepresentations, and appeals to public fear as shamelessly as any other political statement that hopes to unite the public behind a particular ideology." This from a guy who voted for Gore in 2000 and says he'd probably vote for him again. [....]
A few years ago, Giegengack told the Pennsylvania Gazette, the school's alumni magazine, that the environmental analysis course he's teaching today often attracts students who want to be environmental activists and carry picket signs outside the offices of the bad guys in the military-industrial complex. "But I want them to understand that these questions are enormously complex," he went on.
And not settled, scientifically. It is all a theory, and one which lacks scientific proof, and for which many alternative explanations exist. Maybe its true, maybe it isn't.
