Global warming debate heats up

By Henry Lamb

When the Environmental Protection Agency announced a series of grants
to promote climate change education in Maine, officials from Sovereignty
International immediately asked to participate. They were told that the
conference would not discuss the “science” of global warming, and were
refused a place on the program. Instead, the conference is designed to
promote policies to implement the objectives of the Kyoto Protocol
(which has not been ratified by the U.S. Senate) as if global warming
were an established fact.

To rub salt even deeper into the wound, Maine’s global warming
advocates have squirmed around a Congressional requirement which says
that any federal dollars used for such events must provide a balanced
presentation. EPA money goes to the state of Maine. The state then
provides grants to non-government organizations. The EPA can say it is
in compliance with the law while the program successfully excludes a
balanced presentation.

Not to be outdone, Sovereignty International scheduled its own
education seminar to be held tomorrow in Bangor, Maine, just days before
the EPA shindig. Dr. Patrick J. Michaels, Professor of Environmental
Science at the University of Virginia, and a world-renowned
climatologist, will discuss the science of global warming. He knows
first-hand how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report was
edited by policy makers to omit skeptical observations by the world
scientific body. He knows first-hand, how the scientific data has been
manipulated to produce the desired result, while neglecting to report
data that leads to a completely different conclusion. Dr. Michaels knows
what the EPA is desperately trying to keep the rest of the world from
learning: that there is insufficient scientific evidence to support the
draconian policies required by the Kyoto Protocol.

Dr. Keith Idso will also be on hand to explain that the increase in
atmospheric carbon dioxide produces a positive environmental benefit,
not the horrific scenarios advanced by the global warming advocates.
Idso and his father, Sherwood, who is a scientist for the federal
government, have pioneered the research on the effect of elevated
atmospheric carbon dioxide. Sherwood’s experiments indicated that
elevated carbon dioxide resulted in more robust plant growth, higher
fruit and vegetable yields, while decreasing the water requirement for
most plants.

Keith Idso undertook the monumental task of analyzing virtually all
of the carbon dioxide studies conducted during the last ten years by
scientists around the world. Not surprisingly, his study revealed that
other scientists had come to the same conclusion that his father had
reached. He learned that 93 percent of all plants benefit from elevated
carbon dioxide. Five percent show neither benefit nor harm, and only two
percent, mostly plants that live in frozen tundra conditions, show
negative growth in elevated carbon dioxide. Idso’s findings should come
as no surprise. It has long been known that carbon dioxide is vital to
life for plants, as oxygen is vital for animals. This information, too,
should be excluded from the public debate, according to the EPA.

Dr. Bonner R. Cohen, Editor and Publisher of EPA Watch, will bring
more information to public view which the EPA would rather keep quiet.
Cohen published a study of the EPA last year that found “egregious
misconduct” at the EPA. In the wake of the study, 19 EPA scientists
signed an open letter which said in part: “… we find the situation so
reprehensible that we submit this letter, risking our careers rather
than choosing to remain silent.”

The letter goes on to say: “We are but a few of the scientists,
managers and affiliated persons protesting fraud or waste in our agency
involving hundreds of millions of dollars, and alerting the public that
EPA regulations and enforcement actions based on poor science stand to
harm rather than protect public health and the environment.”

Dr. Michael Coffman, Sovereignty International’s Executive Director
will also be on the Maine program, to tell people precisely how the
Kyoto Protocol came into
existence, and how the United Nations community views the United States,
and what they expect from the United States. Coffman has attended the UN
Climate Change meetings, and knows personally how the delegates see the
United States as the greedy consumer of the earth’s resources, while
exploiting the developing nations. While attending a UN Climate Change
meeting in Kyoto in 1997, Congressman Sensenbrenner observed that the
Climate Change Treaty was not an environmental treaty at all, but an
economic treaty designed to redistribute the world’s wealth. Dr. Coffman
will discuss just how that redistribution of wealth is already being
planned.

It’s little wonder that the EPA and its local global warming
advocates prevented Sovereignty International from appearing on their
program. Armed with indisputable facts, and personal experience with the
UN, the EPA, and Congress, the message Sovereignty International has to
offer is far more frightening than any climate change that may be in the
offing. That message reveals increasing government control of American
life, at the behest of the international community, to achieve a
redistribution of wealth and a managed global society.