Martians Funding Climate Change Denial Industry

Does anyone remember Orson Wells` Mercury Theatre? They did a remake for Halloween in 1938 of H.G. Wells` novel ``War of the Worlds`` as a faux live news report on CBS radio which sent many in the country running for the hills in fear of Martians. The Global Warming debate is like a 25 year ``War of the Worlds``; it`s as if Wells continued broadcasting for a generation, reporting tripod sightings in backcountry towns and showing images of purported death-ray scars on rocks and buildings. Imagine if other `journalists` jumped into the game, interviewing farmers about crop circles and UFO sightings.

THAT is what we have with this whole Global Warming issue-mass hysteria, bandwagoning, and a deep-rooted fear by believers that their bubble will burst. This is a generation long silly season, a summer craze on serious steroids. What has turned a hoola-hoop fad into an issue which could have serious national and international repercussions? The fact that some scientists have been sucked in, that some of those oracles of modernity have proclaimed it thus. Of course, many of these same scientists have fashioned a profitable cottage industry out of doomsaying, and they have been at it for a long time, having predicted ice ages, nuclear winters, ultraviolet death through ozone depletion, Bird Flu pandemics, ``silent springs`` and death through DDT, Dioxin scares, population bombs, etc. But, unlike the boy who cried wolf, the media continue to place these people on pedestals because the Left finds this sort of thing beneficial to the propagation of their particular fascistic agenda.

So, Global Warming has become High Science, and thou shalt not challenge it! The grave danger is that those inside the scientific community will bring the house of cards down, so, as good fascists always do, the Gang Green will use strongarm tactics and smears to silence their critics. Like nude emperors or rampaging tripods, everyone is intimidated into silence rather than point to lack of evidence to support the claims made (or the emperor`s trousers).

This sort of intimidation and sleaze is increasingly common, and is a sign that reality is catching up with our Martian hunters. This WSJ piece (courtesy of Wil Wirtanen) illustrates the point:


Global Warming Smear
WSJ, February 9, 2007
Mark Twain once complained that a lie can make it half way around the world before the truth gets its boots on. That's been the case of late in the climate change debate, as political and media activists attempt to stigmatize anyone who doesn't pay homage to their "scientific consensus."

Last week the London Guardian published a story headlined, "Scientists Offer Cash to Dispute Climate Study." The story alleges that the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative-leaning think tank in Washington, collected contributions from ExxonMobil and then offered climate scholars $10,000 so they could lobby against global warming legislation.

Another newspaper, the British Independent, picked up on the story and claimed: "It has come to light that one of the world's largest oil companies, ExxonMobil, is attempting to bribe scientists to pick holes in the IPCC's assessment." (The IPCC is the United Nations climate-change panel.)

It would be easy to dismiss all this as propaganda from British tabloids, except that a few days ago the "news" crossed the Atlantic where more respectable media outlets, including the Washington Post, are reporting the story in what has become all too typical pack fashion. A CNNMoney.com report offered that, "A think tank partly funded by ExxonMobil sent letters to scientists offering them up to $10,000 to critique findings in a major global warming study released Friday which found that global warming was real and likely caused by burning fossil fuels."

Here are the facts as we've been able to collect them. AEI doesn't lobby, didn't offer money to scientists to question global warming, and the money it did pay for climate research didn't come from Exxon.

What AEI did was send a letter to several leading climate scientists asking them to participate in a symposium that would present a "range of policy prescriptions that should be considered for climate change of uncertain dimension." Some of the scholars asked to participate, including Steve Schroeder of Texas A& M, are climatologists who believe that global warming is a major problem.

AEI President Chris DeMuth says, "What the Guardian essentially characterizes as a bribe is the conventional practice of AEI -- and Brookings, Harvard and the University of Manchester -- to pay individuals" for commissioned work. He says that Exxon has contributed less than 1% of AEI's budget over the last decade.

As for Exxon, Lauren Kerr, director of its Washington office, says that "none of us here had ever heard of this AEI climate change project until we read about it in the London newspapers." By the way, commissioning such research is also standard practice at NASA and other government agencies and at liberal groups such as the Pew Charitable Trusts, which have among them spent billions of dollars attempting to link fossil fuels to global warming.

We don't know where the Brits first got this "news," but the leading suspects are the reliable sources at Greenpeace. They have been peddling these allegations for months, and the London newspaper sleuths seem to have swallowed them like pints on a Fleet Street lunch hour.

So, apparently, have several members of the U.S. Senate. Yesterday Senators Bernard Sanders, Patrick Leahy, Dianne Feinstein and John Kerry sent a letter to Mr. DeMuth complaining that "should these reports be accurate," then "it would highlight the extent to which moneyed interests distort honest scientific and public policy discussions. . . . Does your donors' self-interest trump an honest discussion over the well-being of the planet?"

Every member of AEI's board of directors was graciously copied on the missive. We're told the Senators never bothered to contact AEI about the veracity of the reports, and by repeating the distortions, these four Democratic senators, wittingly or not, gave credence to falsehood.

For its part, Exxon appears unwilling to take this smear campaign lying down. Bribery can be a crime, and falsely accusing someone of a crime may well be defamation. A company spokesman says Exxon has written a letter to the Independent demanding a retraction.

One can only conclude from this episode that the environmental left and their political and media supporters now believe it is legitimate to quash debate on climate change and its consequences. This is known as orthodoxy, and, until now, science accepted the legitimacy of challenging it.

Hey, maybe the Martians are behind it! What better way to invade than to allow await our extinction through Global Warming; they could then leisurely come out from their tripods and settle the Earth peacefully. I suspect Martians have been pumping money into the Denial Industry through their nefarious front groups such as Exxon-Mobil to lull us to sleep on this dire problem. Those little green SOB`s!

Don`t kid yourself; Martians have plenty of money from selling tickets to see their crop circles, Nessie, the Abominable Snowman, Sasquatch, and Piltdown Man. They have invested heavily in the oil industry, and buy up patents to automobiles which run on water or grass clippings or the like so such noble inventions never reach the market. Of course, they sneak in and block solar panels and windmills to make them less useful so they can sell their dirty oil and speed us to our extinction. Dick Cheney is clearly one of them; they are a sneaky, diabolical bunch!

I suspect they all go by the pseudonym S. Fred Singer, too!