Bush Perpetrating Climate Hoax, Says House Committee

It seems that many people believe that there is no scientific consensus that the global warming we are currently experiencing is caused by human activity and greenhouse gases. They believe this is a hoax perpetrated by people with a political axe to grind, and they include the IPCC in this category. I would simply discount this as a fringe phenomenon, if I didn't have more than one friend in this category.

In any case, if there's hoaxing going on, at least some of it seems to be working in the other direction. The US House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has just released a report finding that "the Bush Administration has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policymakers and the public about the dangers of global warming."

The report goes on to say: "White House officials and political appointees in the agencies censored congressional testimony on the causes and impacts of global warming, controlled media access to government climate scientists, and edited federal scientific reports to inject unwarranted uncertainty into discussions of climate change and to minimize the threat to the environment and the economy."

I should look at some of the unbelievers' materials to see whether they can be easily refuted - although that may not be the most effective way to direct my energies on the climate issue. In the mean time, there are two things that keep me moving forward:

1. Ulterior motives for discounting the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are easy to find! (Oil industry interests would be sufficient all by themselves.) But I have trouble envisaging any possible ulterior motive for a systematic, world-wide "conspiracy" to lay false blame on human activity.

2. If there is doubt, I would rather take appropriate precautions instead of gambling my children's inheritance of a habitable planet on the hopes that the current apparent scientific consensus is wrong.