by Mona Charen
Though professional hysterics may seek to "hide the decline," there
has been a noticeable drop in the number of Americans who believe that
global warming is a man-made phenomenon. Pause on that for a moment.
Though Americans have been harangued about global warming for more than
a decade, only 35 percent told a recent Pew survey that global warming
is a serious problem, compared with 44 percent the previous year.
This skepticism predated the exposure of the East Anglia
e-mails -- those playful missives that reveal some of the most
prominent climate researchers to be, if not outright charlatans, at
least partisans.
Why don't people buy global warming? Doubtless the poor economy has
pushed less immediate worries to the background. But even before the
e-mails revealed that supposedly neutral truth seekers were prepared to
"redefine peer review" and engage in statistical sleight of hand "to
hide" inconvenient truths, there were ample reasons for skepticism.
It's chilly: There is the pesky fact that, contrary to the
dire predictions of climate alarmists, there has been no measurable
increase in world temperatures since 1998. Yet the amount of carbon
dioxide pumped into the atmosphere has continued to rise. The computer
models immortalized by Al Gore did not anticipate this; in fact, they
predicted that temperatures would continue to rise steeply more or less
forever, except that human beings would all die in 50 years or so with
unknown (though presumably salutary) effects on the by-then Venus-like
surface of planet Earth.
http://townhall.com/columnists/MonaCharen/2009/12/08/torquemada_in_east_anglia