Airing The Dubious Science Of Global Warming

Lawrence Solomon: Airing The Dubious Science Of Global Warming

In The Deniers , Lawrence Solomon profiles 28 topflight scientists whose work undermines the case that humanity is heating up the planet to a destructive degree. Further, the executive director Toronto's Energy Probe shows that the scientific "consensus" behind that theory has been engineered in part by hardball political tactics. The veteran environmentalist's latest book names individuals whose grants evaporated when their research got out of line, and he describes pressure on scientists from climate bureaucrats at the United Nations. "This media-inflated issue is diverting scarce resources away from environmental and economic problems that are much more urgent," the writer told a breakfast meeting in Calgary last week.
...
Solomon says he still has 100 more well-qualified scientific deniers to profile. His book's final chapter - "The Carbon Catastrophe" - attacks the concept of carbon credit trading as pointless in terms of human well-being and destructive to the interests of many poverty-stricken people. "We've seen peasants pushed off their land because carbon credits have artificially increased the value of fast-growing eucalyptus plantations," the author reports. "The proponents of global warming are far better funded and publicized than the scientific deniers. But truth counts, and I'm still optimistic that world can be brought to its senses."

He may be right. A new poll from the Strategic Counsel shows that gasoline prices now top the environment as the primary concern of Canadians. The survey, based on data collected in April, indicated that 18% of Canadians and 19% of Americans felt gasoline prices were their top priority. Canadians who rated the environment as most important declined to 16% in the most recent survey from 22% in January. In the U.S. 33% gave their first priority to the economy. That trend may well migrate north if the economies of Ontario and Quebec weaken any further. "Canadians have never had much depth of conviction about global warming and most are delighted to find out that the problem has been vastly exaggerated," Solomon says.