.
Your first link is a crock, Mr.V. It was the MAJORITY report from the Committee, meaning just the Republicans, led by Sen. James Inhofe, one of the most conservative Republicans in either house. But you're right... they went to all this trouble just to vent their opinion on Gore's successful movie. Their complaints?? The article didn't identify all of them, only interviewed 5 of them, and they saw it at {gasp} a private screening. oooOOOOooo!!
Then, they drag out the usual suspects of naysayer minority science,
Bob Carter, the American Petroleum Institute's paid shill
Richard S. Lindzen, and
Roy Spencer, who's affiliated with the following:
--"Tech Central Science Foundation was formed in late November 2002 (Form 990). The Foundation appears to be a funding arm of the free-market news site, TechCentralStation.com. ExxonMobil gave the Foundation $95,000 in 2003 for "Climate Change Support."--
--"The Heartland Institute sponsors www.climatesearch.org, a web page ostensibly dedicated to objective research on global warming, but at the same time presenting heavily biased research by organizations such as the American Petroleum Institute as an FAQ section. The Heartland Institute networks heavily with other conservative policy organizations, and is part of the State Policy Network, a member of the Cooler Heads Coalition (as of 4/04), and co-sponsored the 2001 Fly In for Freedom with the Wise Use umbrella group, Alliance for America. Heartland also co-sponsored a New York state Conference on Property Rights, hosted by the Property Rights Foundation of America."--
--"Founded in 1984, The George Marshall Institute primarily focused on defense issues, advocating funding for Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative and Star Wars. GMI has since branched out and is one of the leading think tanks trying to debunk climate change."--
Then they go on to criticize Gore's use of the "descredited Mann hockey stick", ignoring that the dispute with Mann's data has to do with temperatures going back further in time, with no significant dispute regarding the 'hockey stick' portion.
Hockey Stick Myths
Yet the Committee Republicans completely ignore additional reports going on under their own roof.
U.S. National Academy of Sciences --"WASHINGTON - The Earth is the hottest it has been in at least 400 years, probably even longer. The National Academy of Sciences, reaching that conclusion in a broad review of scientific work requested by Congress, reported Thursday that the "recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia.
The report was requested in November by the chairman of the House Science Committee, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert R-N.Y., to address naysayers who question whether global warming is a major threat."--
Not to mention....
U.S. National Academy of Sciences Earth hottest it's been in 2,000 years --"Their conclusions (in a report to Congress) were meant to address, and they lent credibility to, a well-known graphic among climate researchers — a "hockey-stick" chart that climate scientists Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes created in the late 1990s to show the Northern Hemisphere was the warmest it has been in 2,000 years."-- American Meteorological Society --"The Arctic is presently exhibiting the largest and most diverse responses to anthropogenic climate warming; these include some of the largest surface temperature increases, rapid retreat of sea ice, and recently documented melting of glacial ice."-- American Geophysical Union --"climate change estimates for the next century may have substantially underestimated the potential magnitude of global warming. They say that actual warming due to human fossil fuel emissions may be 15-to-78 percent higher than warming estimates that do not take into account the feedback mechanism involving carbon dioxide and Earth's temperature."-- NASA Goodard Institute for Space Studies --" Recent warming coincides with rapid growth of human-made greenhouse gases. Climate models show that the rate of warming is consistent with expectations (5). The observed rapid warming thus gives urgency to discussions about how to slow greenhouse gas emissions (6)."--
Your second link is an equal crock. Number one, it doesn't address the science of Global Warming at all. It is a petition against the Kyoto Agreement, and no one on this thread has said diddly-squat about Kyoto. That petition was circulated back in 2000. The petition was endorsed by a past president of the U.S. Academy of Sciences. You have, on this page, the current position of the Academy, which is completely opposite to what your petition suggests. Further,
Scientific American reported...
--"Scientific American took a random sample of 30 of the 1,400 signatories claiming to hold a Ph.D. in a climate-related science. Of the 26 we were able to identify in various databases, 11 said they still agreed with the petition—one was an active climate researcher, two others had relevant expertise, and eight signed based on an informal evaluation. Six said they would not sign the petition today, three did not remember any such petition, one had died, and five did not answer repeated messages. Crudely extrapolating, the petition supporters include a core of about 200 climate researchers – a respectable number, though rather a small fraction of the climatological community."--
As TIME magazine pointed out, the
"Environmentalists and lawmakers spent years shouting at one another about whether the grim forecasts were true, but in the past five years or so, the serious debate has quietly ended. Global warming, even most skeptics have concluded, is the real deal, and human activity has been causing it." Gregg Easterbrook, Brookings Institute
--"As an environmental commentator, I have a long record of opposing alarmism. But based on the data I'm now switching sides regarding global warming, from skeptic to convert. Once global-warming science was too uncertain to form the basis of policy decisions — and this was hardly just the contention of oil executives. "There is no evidence yet" of dangerous climate change, a National Academy of Sciences report said in 1991. A 1992 survey of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society found that only 17 percent of members believed there was sufficient grounds to declare an artificial greenhouse effect in progress. In 1993 Thomas Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center, said there existed "a great range of uncertainty" regarding whether the world is warming. Clearly, the question called for more research. That research is now in, and it shows a strong scientific consensus that an artificially warming world is a real phenomenon posing real danger: "-- Michael Shermer -- "
Politics polluted the science and made me an environmental skeptic. Nevertheless, data trump politics, and a convergence of
evidence from numerous sources has led me to make a cognitive switch on the subject of anthropogenic global warming. My attention was piqued on February 8 when 86 leading evangelical Christians--the last cohort I expected to get on the environmental bandwagon--issued the Evangelical Climate Initiative calling for "national legislation requiring sufficient economy-wide reductions" in carbon emissions."--[/i]
David Attenborough --"I was skeptical about climate change. I was cautious about crying wolf. I am always cautious about crying wolf. I think conservationists have to be careful in saying things are catastrophic when, in fact, they are less than catastrophic.
But I'm no longer skeptical. Now I do not have any doubt at all. I think climate change is the major challenge facing the world. I have waited until the proof was conclusive that it was humanity changing the climate. The thing that really convinced me was the graphs connecting the increase of carbon dioxide in the environment and the rise in temperature, with the growth of human population and industrialisation. The coincidence of the curves made it perfectly clear we have left the period of natural climatic oscillation behind and have begun on a steep curve, in terms of temperature rise, beyond anything in terms of increases that we have seen over many thousands of years."--
And finally, the views of American citizens have also changed over the past several years.
66% of Americans believe that global warming is having a serious impact right now. This in a country where 55% do NOT believe that humans are descended from lower forms.
It seems the case is being made.
.