Calgary: Cooling global warming hysteria just one story of '08

First, the scientific debate over climate change has entered a new phase. This change is reflected in, though hardly constituted by, petitions signed by natural scientists of various kinds disputing the so-called consensus that human-caused CO2 is responsible for global warming.

Two aspects of this story can be distinguished. As James Peden, an atmospheric physicist, said, many scientists "are now searching for a way to back out quietly" from global-warming fearmongering, "without having their professional careers ruined."

This is an ethical or political problem, not a problem in climate science. The crux of it is that major research grants and, in this country, prestigious Canada Research Chairs, have been awarded on the assumption something must be done to stop CO2 from destroying the world.

Those scientists who are the current beneficiaries of a moral panic they help sustain are squirming not because of their ethical transgressions but because of scientific facts.