In past reports, I’ve expressed skepticism about the so-called global warming consensus. Not only did the science seem suspect, often contradicting common sense, but it was clearly ideologically driven. Like the promise that more government programs would save money, the radical environmental movement has a terrible track record of making hysterical predictions that never materialize. And its solutions are always the same – bigger government and higher taxes.

In recent days, there have been shocking revelations that the science behind the global warming scare may well be a total scam. E-mails have been leaked from key scientists that appear to expose blatant data manipulation and efforts to suppress dissent. Science and academia are supposed to be all about free inquiry. But these scientists are acting more like petty liberal ideologues determined to pursue their leftwing agenda regardless of the facts.

I won’t go into all of the details about the emails in this report. You can read more here and here. But this is not just a scientific scandal. “Climategate” is a huge political scandal as well, encompassing leading leftwing luminaries like Al Gore, who have been working for years to impose various socialist schemes aimed at undermining our sovereignty, crippling our economy and redistributing our wealth, all under the guise of combating global warming.

I’m pleased to report that Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma is demanding an investigation, and rightly so, because the stakes are tremendous. The entire premise of cap and trade – massive new energy taxes and vastly expanded government power – rests on this apparent scam.

This is a repost of Walter E. Williams’ writing. I claim no copyright. The original can be found here.

Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let’s look at some environmentalist predictions that they would prefer we forget.

At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, “The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind.” C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, “The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed.” In 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich, Vice President Gore’s hero and mentor, predicted there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and “in the 1970s … hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.” Ehrlich forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich’s predictions about England were gloomier: “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”

In 1972, a report was written for the Club of Rome warning the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992. Gordon Taylor, in his 1970 book “The Doomsday Book,” said Americans were using 50 percent of the world’s resources and “by 2000 they [Americans] will, if permitted, be using all of them.” In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning, “The World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000.”

Harvard University biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, “… civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” That was the same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look Magazine, that by 1995 “… somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”

It’s not just latter-day doomsayers who have been wrong; doomsayers have always been wrong. In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced there was “little or no chance” of oil being discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last only another 13 years. In 1949, the Secretary of the Interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight. Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey advised us that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. The fact of the matter, according to the American Gas Association, there’s a 1,000 to 2,500 year supply.

Here are my questions: In 1970, when environmentalists were making predictions of manmade global cooling and the threat of an ice age and millions of Americans starving to death, what kind of government policy should we have undertaken to prevent such a calamity? When Ehrlich predicted that England would not exist in the year 2000, what steps should the British Parliament have taken in 1970 to prevent such a dire outcome? In 1939, when the U.S. Department of the Interior warned that we only had oil supplies for another 13 years, what actions should President Roosevelt have taken? Finally, what makes us think that environmental alarmism is any more correct now that they have switched their tune to manmade global warming?

Here are a few facts: Over 95 percent of the greenhouse effect is the result of water vapor in Earth’s atmosphere. Without the greenhouse effect, Earth’s average temperature would be zero degrees Fahrenheit. Most climate change is a result of the orbital eccentricities of Earth and variations in the sun’s output. On top of that, natural wetlands produce more greenhouse gas contributions annually than all human sources combined.

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Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Barack Obama came back from his Asian trip with nothing to benefit the U.S. Meanwhile, Iranian “strong man” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues to outmaneuver the Obama Administration, even in our own back yard. The Shiite fundamentalist is strengthening ties with Cuba and Venezuela. Today, he is in resource-rich Brazil, making deals and taunting the United States. From there, he heads to Bolivia to continue to bolster his influence in the Western Hemisphere.

After a year of watching Obama’s limp-wristed foreign policy, the Holocaust-denying dictator has concluded he knows his adversary well. He told the Brazilian media that the U.S. and Israel “don’t have the courage” to attack Iran and stop his nuclear weapons program. He is probably right about Barack Obama, but I suspect he has misjudged Israel.

Back home in Iran, Ahmadinejad continues to smash dissent while Obama and the State Department grovel at his feet, begging for negotiations. Ahmadinejad laughs in return, and strengthens his control of Iran. Six thousands military centers are being opened in elementary schools throughout the Islamic Republic to indoctrinate young jihadists. The Revolutionary Guards are being given control of various forms of communication – telephone land lines, cell phone companies and Internet providers. In the spring, it will launch its own news agency to spout the mullahs’ propaganda.

But no insult, no affront, no threat from Iran will dispel our president’s delusional view that if only he could sit down with Ahmadinejad they could kiss and make up. Unfortunately for us, Obama’s “mush” is no match for Ahmadinejad’s “steel.” With each hour, we grow closer to an unprecedented defeat of U.S. interests in the Middle East.

At 11:16 PM Saturday night, the House of Representatives passed Nancy Pelosi’s 2,000-page, $1.2 trillion socialized medicine scheme by just two votes. Republicans were virtually unanimous in their opposition (only one Republican – Anh Cao, who represents a liberal majority-black district in New Orleans – voted for the bill), while 219 Democrats voted for it. More than three dozen Democrats voted against it, proving yet again that on major liberal initiatives the most bi-partisan aspect of these bills is the opposition to them.

The House version of the healthcare bill has been declared “dead on arrival” in the Senate, and Democrats remain divided over some big issues, including taxpayer-subsidies for abortion. During the House debate, 64 Democrats broke ranks to back the Stupak (D-MI)/Pitts (R-PA) amendment preventing taxpayer funding of abortion. After that vote, Planned Parenthood issued a statement noting, “Planned Parenthood Federation of America has no choice but to oppose HR 3962 [the entire healthcare ‘reform’ bill].” That’s the good news.

Here’s the bad news. Today House liberals are demanding that the Stupak/Pitts amendment be stripped from the bill in the House/Senate conference committee. The Hill quotes Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) as saying, “I am confident that when it comes back from the conference committee that that language won’t be there.”

This battle will continue, and there is a chance the Senate won’t be able to act at all until next year. We will keep on defending our values, and you need to do so also.

The evidence is now overwhelming that the Fort Hood murderer, Nidal Malik Hasan, is an Islamist who was trying to please Allah when he gunned down our American heroes. ABC News reported this morning that the CIA has evidence that he had tried to contact Al Qaeda in recent months. For normal Americans the news that he shouted “Allahu Akbar,” the battle cry of jihadists, as he poured bullets into our sons and daughters was all we needed to know.

But that information wasn’t good enough for Dr. Phil, Larry King, major media outlets such as Newsweek, the president and, sadly, even our military elites. Many of them jumped to the conclusion that this was another example of a soldier “breaking” from battle stress. It didn’t seem puzzling to them that he had never been in combat! In fact, all of our elites wanted to lecture the rest of us and warn us that we’d better not jump to conclusions.

Now we know that for years Hasan was quite open about his Islamist views. In fact, HE HARRASSED his fellow soldiers – not the other way around, as has been suggested. Complaints about Hasan’s anti-American rantings were ignored. Some military people say they didn’t file complaints because they were afraid that doing so would hurt their careers in the increasingly “politically correct” Army bureaucracy.

Hasan made presentations that justified suicide bombings, and argued that the wars we have been fighting since 9/11 are really wars against Islam. He tried to convert his military patients to Islam and was put on probation. He attended a mosque in Northern Virginia that two 9/11 hijackers also attended. The list goes on and on.

As an obvious Islamist, Hasan did the predictable – he killed as many of us as he could. His actions should be no more mysterious than those of the hijackers who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11 or the Palestinian family who celebrates when they receive news that their teenage child has blown himself up while killing Jews.

What is harder to fathom is why so many elites are more interested in spreading politically correct lies than in confronting the strong likelihood that our jihadist enemy has infiltrated key American institutions. More of our soldiers will die, as will more of us, if the media and our government leaders don’t wake up. Nidal Hasan should not have been in the Army – he should have been in jail. He should not have been assigned to counseling returning American warriors. He should not have been promoted.

On Meet The Press Sunday, Army Chief of Staff General George Casey continued to urge people not to jump to conclusions about the overwhelming evidence in this case. He expressed deep concern about a possible backlash against Muslim members of our Armed Forces. He actually said this: “As horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.” Does he really believe that? I think that 13 American families would argue that we could have had one person less of “diversity” at Fort Hood in exchange for 13 live American heroes.

And what about the White House? Since long before this attack, this president has refused to use the phrase “Islamic terrorism,” and has banned its use by others in the government. He began his administration by attempting to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where Hasan’s jihadist brothers are imprisoned. Day by day, America becomes less safe under his leadership.