Tom's Journal

To all my friends that claim that there are scientists that doubt global warming. I know you all keep quoting Peter Doran, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, as your shining example of there are scientists that doubt global warming. Well Peter Doran would like you to know that...

Our results have been misused as “evidence” against global warming by Michael Crichton in his novel State of Fear and by Ann Coulter in her latest book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism. Search my name on the Web, and you will find pages of links to everything from climate discussion groups to Senate policy committee documents — all citing my 2002 study as reason to doubt that the earth is warming.  One recent Web column even put words in my mouth. I have never said that “the unexpected colder climate in Antarctica may possibly be signaling a lessening of the current global warming cycle.” I have never thought such a thing either. . . . I would like to remove my name from the list of scientists who dispute global warming.

It took an extra 30 or so years for the tobacco-industry-manufactured scientific “debate” over smoking to be resolved.  This time we don’t have 30 years.

(Thanks to Andrew Tobias for pointing this out.)

What really pisses me off about this is that a Manhatten Project-style effort to find an alternative to oil (which only really has to replace a fraction of our oil needs to make us energy independent) would (a) create jobs, (b) defund the terrorists, (c) help the environment. How could politicians not want it? (Oh, all the ones I’m supporting seem to have signed on.)