In the wake of the “Climategate” revelations and accusations from members of the U.S. Congress that scientists allegedly implicated in efforts to suppress studies undermining the theory of manmade climate change were engaged in “scientific fascism,” the inevitable push back has begun.

The 31,000 American scientists who have signed the petition opposing the Kyoto agreement all agree that:

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.

For some reason their skepticism regarding anthropogenic global warming doesn’t get much attention from the media. Go figure.

Now 1,700 British scientists have signed a petition in support of the troubled theory, and it’s a safe bet that they will have a much easier time getting the ear of the press.

According to The Times of London,

The Met Office has embarked on an urgent exercise to bolster the reputation of climate-change science after the furore over stolen e-mails.

More than 1,700 scientists have agreed to sign a statement defending the “professional integrity” of global warming research. They were responding to a round-robin request from the Met Office, which has spent four days collecting signatures. The initiative is a sign of how worried it is that e-mails stolen from the University of East Anglia are fuelling scepticism about man-made global warming at a critical moment in talks on carbon emissions.

One scientist said that he felt under pressure to sign the circular or risk losing work. The Met Office admitted that many of the signatories did not work on climate change.

John Hirst, the Met Office chief executive, and Julia Slingo, its chief scientist, wrote to 70 colleagues on Sunday asking them to sign “to defend our profession against this unprecedented attack to discredit us and the science of climate change”. They asked them to forward the petition to colleagues to generate support “for a simple statement that we . . . have the utmost confidence in the science base that underpins the evidence for global warming”.

But despite protestations of spontaneity, there are apparently some scientists who felt they were pressured to sign.

One scientist told The Times he felt under pressure to sign. “The Met Office is a major employer of scientists and has long had a policy of only appointing and working with those who subscribe to their views on man-made global warming,” he said.

Professor Slingo denied that the Met Office had put anyone under pressure. “The response has been absolutely spontaneous. As a scientist you sign things you agree with, not because you are worried about what the Met Office might think of you,” she said.

Peer pressure is a very powerful thing in almost any area of human activity, and certainly resisting peer pressure in the sciences raises fears — whether justified or not — when it comes time to procure future research grants. It will be interesting to see whether or not other scientists will come forward in the near future claiming that they also felt pressured to sign. However, regardless of the issues of spontaneity and peer pressure, The Times highlights the fact that the signatories represent but a fraction of British scientists.

With the Copenhagen conference in full swing, and the theory which is the ideological justification for the entire meeting now facing widespread public and scientific ridicule, the urge among supporters of the theory to rally their supporters is understandable, but needs to be kept in perspective.

What the public needs is to confront statements which begin “According to scientists…” with a healthy measure of skepticism. The debate surrounding global warming is so contentious because of the highly theoretical nature of the models which are utilized by proponents of manmade climate change. The “Climategate” revelations are the sort of thing which causes many within the scientific community to become alarmed precisely because the allegation is that the credibility of the scientists at the very heart of creating the global warming theory has been fundamentally compromised.

Scientific truth cannot be established by polls; what is needed is data and independent verification of the assertions made by the advocates of the theory. But with much of the original data destroyed, locked behind “confidentiality” agreements, or challenged because of the manner in which it was collected, manmade climate change is farther away from being seen as “settled science” today than it was six months ago, and the extreme actions being contemplated by the Copenhagen conference are less justifiable than ever before.

Rt. Rev. James Heiser has served as Pastor of Salem Lutheran Church in Malone, Texas, while maintaining his responsibilities as publisher of Repristination Press, which he established in 1993 to publish academic and popular theological books to serve the Lutheran Church.  Heiser has also served since 2005 as the Dean of Missions for The Augustana Ministerium and in 2006 was called to serve as Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of North America (ELDoNA). An advocate of manned space exploration, Heiser serves on the Steering Committee of the Mars Society. His publications include two books; The Office of the Ministry in N. Hunnius’ Epitome Credendorum (1996) and A Shining City on a Higher Hill: Christianity and the Next New World (2006), as well as dozens of journal articles and book reviews.

Source: JBS.org

12 Cosponsors: John Conyers, Jr.; (D-MI); Ron E. Paul (R-TX); Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD); Bob Filner (D-CA); Walter Jones, Jr. (R-NC); Lynn Woolsey (D-CA); Edward Whitfield (R-KY); Michael Capuano (D-MA); Timothy V. Johnson (R-IL); Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ); Eric Massa (D-NY); and Alan Grayson (D-FL).

Dennis Kucinich “We Can’t Afford These Wars!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8iozAwHYYE

Over A Million Innocent People Perished In A War Based On A Lie! Congressman Dennis Kucinich

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mafHPre-JgU

Dennis Kucinich “I Have Seen The Slow & Steady Erosion Of The Constitution Of The United States!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnEFhVaLrdk

Kucinich measure to end Afghanistan war gains cosponsors

By Sabrina Eaton, The Plain Dealer

December 15, 2009, 2:40PM

Dennis Kucinich’s proposed congressional effort to end the Afghanistan war has gained a dozen bipartisan cosponsors during the week the Cleveland Democrat has circulated it.

Here’s the cosponsor list provided by Kucinich’s office: John Conyers, Jr.; (D-MI); Ron E. Paul (R-TX); Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD); Bob Filner (D-CA); Walter Jones, Jr. (R-NC); Lynn Woolsey (D-CA); Edward Whitfield (R-KY); Michael Capuano (D-MA); Timothy V. Johnson (R-IL); Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ); Eric Massa (D-NY); and Alan Grayson (D-FL).

“At a time when 15 milllion people are unemployed we cannot continue spending hundreds of billions of dollars on disastrous wars,” Kucinich said in a press release. “My resolution will force a debate and vote on the war in Afghanistan. Congress must reassert its constitutional authority to start and end wars.”

Kucinich’s office said a similar privileged resolution to end the war in Pakistan will be introduced at a later date. Privileged resolutions require a House of Representatives debate within 15 days of introduction.

How Dare They!

Group promoting climate skepticism has extensive ties to Exxon-Mobil

By Sahil Kapur
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

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A group promoting skepticism over widely-accredited climate change science has a web of connections to influential oil giant Exxon-Mobil, Raw Story has found.

The organization is called the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), apparently named after the UN coalition International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). An investigation into the group reveals its numerous links to Exxon-Mobil, a vehement opponent of climate legislation and notorious among scientists for funding global warming skeptics.

“Exxon-Mobil essentially funds people to lie,” Joseph Romm, lauded climate expert and author of the blog Climate Progress, told Raw Story. “It’s important for people to understand that they pay off the overwhelming majority of groups in the area of junk science.”

The NIPCC’s signature report, “Climate Change Reconsidered,” disputes the notion that global warming is human-caused, insisting in its policy summary that “Nature, not human activity, rules the planet.” Many of its assertions have been challenged by, among others, the scientists’ blog RealClimate.

The report was released and promoted this summer by the Heartland Institute, a think tank that claims to support “common-sense environmentalism” as opposed to “more extreme environmental activism.” It alleges that “Global warming is a prime example of the alarmism that characterizes much of the environmental movement.”

Heartland has received at least $676,500 from Exxon-Mobil since 1998, the year Exxon launched a campaign to oppose the Kyoto Treaty, according to official documents of the two groups that have been compiled and reproduced by the website ExxonSecrets.org. Also, the institute’s self-described Government Relations Adviser Walter F. Buchholtz has been a lobbyist for Exxon-Mobil, the Washington Post reported in 2004.

The study’s two principal authors and NIPCC leaders S Fred Singer and Craig D Idso are both associated with various organizations that have gotten generous funding from Exxon-Mobil.

Singer has researched and published for the Cato Institute, which has accepted $125,000 in grants from Exxon-Mobil since 1998. Other professional affiliations include the National Center for Policy Analysis, Frontiers of Freedom, and American Council on Science and Health — which have accepted contributions of $540,000, $1.27 million and $150,000, respectively, from Exxon.

Although some praise him as a hero, Singer has been slammed by many fellow climate scientists as “a fraud, a charlatan and a showman” for his unorthodox views and research.

His co-author Idso is founder, board chairman and former president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, whose mission statement is to “separate reality from rhetoric in the emotionally-charged debate that swirls around the subject of carbon dioxide and global change.” The organization has taken $100,000 in funding from Exxon since 1998, according to the oil company’s reports.

Idso is also affiliated with the George Marshall Institute, which has reportedly won $840,000 from Exxon.

Exxon-Mobil has spent more money lobbying Congress in the last two years than any enterprise other than the Chamber of Commerce, dishing out $29 million in 2008 and over $20 million so far in 2009 to legislators. It’s among the top 10 biggest spenders of lobbying cash since 1998, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

“Exxon has waged certainly the biggest, most concerted, and most extreme disinformation campaign on this issue,” Romm told Raw Story. “The trouble is they don’t have to win the argument — all they have to do is blow smoke and cast doubt, and they’ve accomplished their end.”

In a recent incident, hackers exposed private emails exchanged between climate scientists. Some said the revealed information didn’t add up to a conspiracy, while others declared it definitive proof that anthropogenic global warming is made-up.

The Senate will soon take up the mantle on climate bill that the House narrowly passed this summer, and a heated debate is likely to occur in Congress over the nature of the threat and the type of action that needs to be taken.

“I think we’re going to pass it, but it’s going to be an epic struggle,” Romm said.

Republican Sen. Orrin Harch has referenced the NIPCC report, calling it a “Comprehensive scientific answer to the IPCC [sic] Reports.” Various blogs, such the conservative Free Republic, have touted this report as evidence that “global warming is not a crisis, and never was.”

Source: -

http://rawstory.com/2009/12/climate-skeptic-group-nipcc-extensive-ties-exxonmobil/

Last night, President Obama announced both his decision to add 30,000 U.S. troops to the mire in Afghanistan and his desire to see other countries and N.A.T.O. match his surge. Thanks to U.S. taxpayers, mercenaries will continue to be a part of the foreign presence in Afghanistan. The Republicans support the President’s move and are expected to reward President Obama with the bulk of their Congressional votes to pass his plan.

However, there is deep disquiet today within the ranks of the President’s own base in the Democratic Party, with independents, and with middle-of-the-roaders called “swing” voters. In unprecedented numbers, voters in the United States of all previous political persuasions went to the polls and invested their dreams and, most importantly, their votes in the “hope” and “change” promised by the Obama campaign. But in light of the President’s defense of Bush Administration war crimes and torture in U.S. courts, the transfer of trillions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars to the wealthy banking elite, continued spying on environmental and peace activists as well as support for the extension of the Patriot Act, and removal of Medicare-for-all (single payer) as a central feature of proposed health care reform, Obama voters are rethinking their support.

Already, according to a Daily Koss report written by Steve Singiser: “Two in five Democratic voters either consider themselves unlikely to vote at this point in time, or have already made the firm decision to remove themselves from the 2010 electorate pool. Indeed, Democrats were three times more likely to say that they will ‘definitely not vote’ in 2010 than are Republicans.” By contrast, Republicans are happy today. Almost giddy with glee as far as I can see. Warmonger John McCain and most Republicans will make sure the President gets what he wants. And in 2012, they will abandon their support of this President and support the candidate that comes from their base.

War-weary voters in this country are committed to peace. They reject the notion, as put forward by Vice President Dick Cheney that “the American way of life” is something worth fighting for when that means that war becomes an energy policy.

Tragically, the major unstated U.S. interest in the region that the President has bought into is the unacceptability of a proposed Iran-Pakistan-India (I-P-I) pipeline at a time when our country is saber-rattling against and threatening Iran with more sanctions. Earlier this year, Iran and Pakistan decided to move forward with their pipeline even if India decides to drop out. Ironically, I-P-I is also known as the “peace pipeline.”

The alternative pipeline route, Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (T-A-P-I), is supported by Washington because it denies an important economic benefit to Iran. Sadly, nowhere in the President’s remarks did he mention the pipeline on which construction is slated to begin in 2010.

U.S. policy is not only guided by pipeline politics. There is also the consideration of chessboard geo-positioning necessary to contain Russia, China, and ensure U.S. empire—for those inclined to traditional Cold Warrior “containment” thinking. Apparently, behind what some are calling a “shadow war in Muslim lands,” are targeted assassination teams that have wreaked tri-border havoc in Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Fortunately, this time around, I’m convinced that U.S. voters will vote for peace. President Obama has now ensured this outcome. Imagine, John McCain and Joe Lieberman have just been made very happy by the President’s choice while that same choice leaves swing voters, independents, and some Democrats who enthusiastically supported Obama’s campaign looking for somewhere else to go.

We will be your insurgency

So it’s come to this. Obama’s gotta wage his war, and I gotta sit in the street.

It’s not that I like blocking traffic or getting arrested or dealing with the fall-out when I could be reading a book. It’s that I can’t live with endless war and I must end it or surely die.

I’m not leaving this country. This is my mess, so help me, and I’ll scrub it till my fingers bleed. I will not compromise with genocide. I will not run from those behind it.

Endless war is the promise of our time, signed in blood and sealed with death’s own kiss. Its stench hangs around us heavy smog. While I dare not breath for fear of intoxication, I cannot hold much longer.

This is the American nightmare, and it’s shattering my heart like glass.

As I stepped to the microphone outside West Point Military Academy Tuesday, all I wanted was to go home, honestly. Good lord, don’t let me cry in front of these people, I thought. Why must I play out this misery for all to see?

Obama’s only doing exactly what he said he’d do, but still, I’m heartbroken. I can’t go on like this.

I’ve been a mess. When I try to imagine the future of this country, I see nothing. I have no faith that good always triumphs anymore. I think where there’s a will to change there’s a way to subvert it. I taste the world I am to inherit, and it makes me sick to my stomach.

But as I admitted to the crowd my feelings of hopelessness and despondency, I realized once again, that I am not alone. People stared into my eyes with equally heavy brows and clenching teeth. When they came close, I saw tears in their eyes as well, and they seemed thankful to see them in mine.

Our suffering is one. We are the disenfranchised. In our lives, our jobs, our politics; we have been denigrated to utter impotence. People are not meant to live this way, and we cry out in one voice through history for liberation. Again and again, we’ve had our voices ignored and our mutual bonds dissolved by paranoia and fury.

But I couldn’t let him get away with it. They think his slick speeches and skin color will keep the left at home. Someone had to go down for this, even if it was me.

We marched to the installation gate where a line of cops and troops were waiting. When we sat down in front of the barricades, they didn’t seem all that concerned. Young and old alike joined us on the pavement. I was left awestruck by the singular dedication of the burgeoning crowd to ending our Global War of Lies and Terror.

For 30 minutes, the hundreds of us shouted down the full winter moon. We chanted our opposition to escalation. We lamented the change we were promised and denied. The message was loud and in no unmistakable terms: Obama, this is the death of your presidency!

When we moved into the traffic lane after he started his speech, I felt a great warmth from within for the first time in weeks. While through my head streamed images of Satyagrahas past, my heart pounded reassurance, for it knew I was there for a reason.

This government refuses to respond to the needs and demands of its people. It’s come to this. I refuse to be ignored. I pledge to be peacefully ungovernable.

The police carried my crutches while I limped to the car in hand-cuffs. A sense of satisfaction settled in as I waited in the back and counted those who’d be joining me ‘downtown.’ Six of us in total. We’d done it. At least to us, Obama had not gotten away with it.

Not an hour later, we were released. The officers who I dealt with were beyond respectful to us and our cause. While I didn’t make any friends, I didn’t find any enemies. At some point during the evening, I cut my finger on the pavement, but beyond that, we walked away with little more than disorderly conduct charges and a notice to appear Dec. 15 at 6:30 p.m. at the Town Court at 254 Main St. Highland Falls, NY 10928. (Come join us!)

As we left the station, I was thrilled to see a sidewalk full of activists waiting and to find a prominent lawyer in town already representing us. While Obama had shattered our dreams of peace, we felt we’d won the day. Even with the impending escalation, we found the strength to joyously declare the birth of a new peace movement!

The government won this round. 30,000 more troops is a clear loss for us and more importantly the people of Afghanistan. But from what I saw, we are ready to rededicate ourselves to unwavering resistence from within. In the words of our former dictator, “fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…see, you can’t get fooled again.”

Obama is a war president and we are a peace movement. As long as we’re moving, Obama, and you refuse to be governed, we’ll refuse to be governed. Your racist wars will end and this world will know peace in our lifetimes. Until that day, rest assured that WE WILL BE YOUR INSURGENCY!

American Iraq War Veteran,

Matthis Chiroux