A message from Ron Boyer, “Scientists for Truth” program director: 

Alarmists espousing the theory of Anthropogenic (human-caused) Global Warming (AGW) have a big problem. As planet Earth continues to cool, the evidence to back their cause is unraveling like a cheap sweater.  While relying on shaky, cherry-picked data to support their hysteria, they have tried to convince us the debate is over—the verdict is in.  They are wrong! 

My career began in January, 1970, as an employee of an air quality control agency.  That date preceded the Clean Air Act of 1970, the origins of EPA, and the first Earth Day.  During my early years at the agency, our attention was often focused on global cooling.  The evidence seemed to indicate man-made particulate matter was blocking the sun’s warming rays, causing the planet to cool.  But by the late seventies, the earth had moved into a warming pattern, and we concluded our hypothesis had been incorrect. 

Time will resolve almost all scientific debates.  It will resolve the AGW debate.  Unfortunately politics may have preempted the scientific debate on global warming, and hurry-up legislation pushed by the alarmists will strap our nation with intractable energy and economic problems.   

For thirty-some years I have worked for the adoption and enforcement of air quality regulations, including the collection of pollutant emission fees.  Today I serve on the Missouri Air Conservation Commission, the air quality rule-making body for Missouri.  Throughout my career, emission fees have been collected for the purpose of financing the regulatory programs.  But now—as proposed by the current administration—emission fees collected under carbon cap-and-trade rules will be used for an entirely different purpose. 

The proposed cap-and-trade program will collect hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars from the un-favored industries, and then redistribute the billions to the favored industries.  The government, as never before, will hand pick winners and losers.  Is it any wonder the managers of the un-favored industries are afraid to speak out?  Instead they are forced to play a game of complex charades to preserve their seat at the government’s very big table. 

In Ayn Rand’s 1957 classic novel, Atlas Shrugged, the Washington bureaucrats employed a variety of wealth redistribution schemes, not much different than the carbon cap-and-trade strategy. In her book, those bureaucrats were known as looters, and the end result of their actions was total ruination of the nation’s economy.  Ms. Rand came to America from the Soviet Union, so she had a full understanding of governmental looting techniques. 

And in the movie, All the President’s Men, Deep Throat told Bob Woodward, “Just follow the money.” Today, one doesn’t have to be overly observant to realize the most ardent advocates of AGW stand to gain financially: Al Gore with his carbon trading company; university researchers with outstretched hands for research money; environmental consulting companies poised to enhance the bottom line by tracking carbon emissions and performing third-party verifications; alternative energy companies banking on subsidies to make their products competitive; and government employees counting on the vast new bureaucracy to keep them happily employed for decades. 

It seems to me the “scientific method” is in shambles when it comes to the study of climate change.  All too often, scientists still searching for truth on the subject are castigated by their peers.  The alarmists, in the name of planetary survival, are determined to quell the scientific debate.  We can’t allow that to happen. 

Congressmen Henry Waxman and Edward Markey have unveiled the “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.” The carbon cap-and-trade scheme is among the Act’s many provisions.  Time has now become of the essence.  The weakness of the alarmists’ scientific evidence, and the extreme consequences of regulating greenhouse gas emissions, must be understood by the news media and the general public. 

The August 13 climate change conference in Springfield, Missouri, will be the first in a series of conferences offered by Scientists for Truth.  The conference will highlight the fallacy of AGW proponents’ apocalyptic dogma.  Please join us in support of fair and honest science.