I see a lot of things over my Facebook feed that annoys me.  Usually I just ignore most of it as a sort of white noise that comes with having a Facebook. However, today I saw something that caught my attention.  A fellow student at Alma College posted a link that proved that climate change was false. Obviously, if there is definite proof that climate change was false I wanted to see it.  I was disappointed to see that the link did not take me to a journal article but rather a webpage for one Roger Hedgecock.  Mr. Hedgecock makes some pretty extravagant claims in his post.  Rather than summarizing them I am going to directly rebuttal his article piece by piece.

While all eyes focus on the unfolding drama of the “health-care reform–health-insurance reform–jobs bill,” another critical part of the “Change America” plan just took a torpedo midships.

So far this part is just the introduction paragraph.  I don’t agree with what he is saying but he is certainly entitled to his opinion.

Some 1,000 e-mails and 3,000 documents from the Climate Research Unit at the U.K.’s University of East Anglia (where the “world’s leading climate scientists work”) have been leaked. The blogosphere is on fire – cover-up, falsified studies, intimidation of skeptics. It’s all there.

I have to give Mr. Hedgecock credit.  Up until this paragraph his article was pretty truthful.  There are a few things that bother me here.  I feel that Hedgecock doubts that the researchers at The University of East Anglia are actually qualified for their jobs.  I did a quick Google search and found that The University of East Anglia was actually voted the 20^th best school in the Time’s Good University Guide 2008.  It is also worth noting that the university’s satisfaction rate is over 90%. Obviously, Hedgecock has never read the Wikipedia page for The University of East Anglia; if he had he would know that Anglia is considered a very good school with a great reputation.

I turned again to Google to search the internet for the most inflammatory e-mails that where leaked.  I found a webpage from The Telegraph with the most “damning” quotes.  After reading over the quotes I have come to the conclusion that the climate scientists are very competitive and maybe a bit rude.  However, I don’t see any evidence that even remotely proves that climate change is a hoax. In fact for there being 1,000 leaked e-mails and 3,000 leaked documents only having 6 quotes that only show the slightest evidence of a climate change being a hoax is pretty good.  I think Mr. Hedgecock needs to understand that in the scientific community it is common for scientist with conflicting hypothesis to compete with each other.  So the fact that there is scientist and data that say climate change is not happening is really insignificant.  It is now a scientific consensus that climate change is happening.

The Cap and Trade bill to lower our standard of living and subject our consumer choices to government diktat is based on the public agreeing that what we once called “progress” threatens the planet with destruction and we must stop it. It is a matter of accepted dogma among the collectivist lemmings of the Left that the Earth is warming because of our insatiable appetite for food, clothing and shelter – and cars, big-screen TVs and a zillion gadgets run by electricity.

The industries producing these things produce “greenhouse gas emissions,” threatening mass starvation, drought and hurricanes – a slow motion “2012” that must be stopped by decreasing “greenhouse gas emissions.” Cows will belch less if we stop eating them, that sort of thing.

Again Hedgecock ignores that both The National Academy of Sciences and The National Research Council have both acknowledged that climate change is a real and present issue.  In his last line I believe that Hedgecock was trying to imply that everyone who is concerned about the environment is a hippy living out on the fringe.  Not so, I am very concerned about the environment and I think cows are rather tasty.

The collectivist Left in academia, media and politics got away with imprinting this dogma on the popular mind only because generations of government-school graduates have been successfully stripped of knowledge of history, geology or climate science. There was a time when “science” was a rigorous search for truth that required an open skeptical mind, double-blind studies, multiple repeated experiments, peer-reviewed published data and a strong belief that if you are proven wrong, someone else got it right and the world will benefit. This approach was good enough for Pasteur, Newton and Ben Franklin, but not for today’s crowd.

Earlier generations knew that the Earth’s climate was constantly changing, affected by numerous influences, some known (sunspots, Earth axis wobble, El Nino), some presumed still to be discovered. Historians knew that European history was influenced by periods of warming and cooling. The Vikings didn’t call it “Greenland” because it was covered (as now) with ice. Geologists knew that, in geologic time, the Sahara Desert was a tropical rainforest, glaciers covered Chicago and numerous other wonders.

While people could certainly affect the environment around them to their benefit by agriculture, animal husbandry and industry (this used to be thought of as an indication of intelligence), our grandfathers would have thought the idea that puny mankind could affect the climate of the whole planet absurd.

Whatever change did occur in what was then called “the weather” would require mankind to adapt – a trait of our species that our ancestors celebrated. How times have changed.

I feel that Hedgecock argues against himself here.  He claims that scientist that who agree that the climate is changing are not keeping open minds about the issue.  And that somehow their research is meaningless because it is not conducted exactly as Pasteur, Newton, and Franklin conducted their research. To be fair I feel (And I assume most will agree with me) that mankind as a whole has gotten a lot better at conducting experiments as time has gone on. So I think it is safe to assume that the climate scientist know what they are doing.

Today, Al Gore leads the pack asserting the truth of anthropogenic global warming. Complicated computer models spewed forth Gore’s PowerPoint presentation, which begat Oscar and Nobel. And it came to pass that the Prophet Gore gave stirring lectures to masses of the adoring initiated, traveling from place to place in a private jet, from hotel to speech in a caravan of SUVs whose motors were kept running to warm (or cool as the season required) while Gore lectured the world on the urgent need to reduce CO2 emissions.

Neither the computer models nor Gore could explain the fact that from 1998 to 2008 (the last full year of surface temperature readings), the Earth did not keep warming (as the models had predicted). It actually cooled. Neither the computer models nor Gore could explain the dramatic drop in the number and severity of Atlantic hurricanes when both the models and Gore had predicted ever more Katrinas every year.

Now this. The final nail in the “climate change” dogma’s coffin?

The CRU e-mails expose a priesthood in inquisition mode, masquerading as scientists and protecting their preconceived conclusions from any contradictory data or the questioning of skeptical scientists. For example, the leaked (or hacked) e-mail correspondence includes fundamental challenges to the validity of Siberian tree-ring studies that helped “prove” anthropogenic global warming, and supported the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report – a report that Gore has waved everywhere like a bloody shirt, saying the debate on global warming “is over.”

I feel that Hedgecock is trying to distract his readers from the fact that he has so far offered no real evidence that climate change is a hoax.  Instead he takes to bashing Al Gore. Hedgecock then goes on to claim that all the earth has been cooling the past few decades.   He fails to mention the fact that the icecaps are shrinking.  I guess that can be attributed to all the hot air this guy is releasing.

While the blogosphere buzzed all weekend with the contents of these e-mails (see for example powerlineblog.com) and analyzed what many began calling the biggest scientific scandal of all time, the Old Media went into protection mode. This scandal threatens the whole scientific rationale underpinning the campaign for world government, higher taxes and a decreased standard of living for all (except the Chinese). You’d never know it in the Old Media. The New York Times reported it as a third-rate e-mail burglary “causing a stir among global warming skeptics.”

Move on, nothing to see here.

The Washington Post (“Hackers steal electronic data from top climate research center”) quotes the “researchers” at the CRU saying “that the e-mails have been taken out of context.” No analysis of the “context” is provided.

The BBC assured its listeners that “the police have been informed” of the break-in. Just another hacker story. Ho hum. Just as the scientific method has suffered a reversion to dogma in the climate-change campaign, so too the “journalism” of the Old Media has degenerated into laughable propaganda.

The real story here cannot be so easily buried. Climate-change prophets threaten millions with poverty if their schemes become law. A preview can be seen in the “man-made dust bowl” of Central California where water has been cut off to one of the most fertile and productive agricultural areas on Earth to “protect” a small fish that one judge thinks might be harmed if the water was used to grow food.

Once again Hedgecock shows just how far off his rocker he really is.  He claims that media is controlled by the environmentalist who are working to help establish a one world government.  Personally, I don’t see the connection however; Hedgecock is pretty hell bent that the environmental movement is part of a larger world wide conspiracy.

Throughout this entire article Hedgecock has not shown a single scrap of evidence that climate change is a hoax. Rather, Hedgecock has shown that he is nothing more than a mouthpiece for a group of people who choose to ignore climate change.   The thing that really bothers me is that a lot of people seem to agree with this man.  In order for the United States to have a serious discussion about climate change we must expose people like Hedgecock for what they are.  Misinformed fear mongers who for some reason wish to ignore pressing problems such as global climate change.

Written by BEN ROBERTS.