AN INCONVENIENT SCIENTIST

Al Gore and his allies constantly lecture that the debate over climate change really is not a scientific debate. There is simply no legitimate opposing view to the scientific consensus that man - made carbon emissions drive global warming, they say. To suggest or report otherwise is irresponsible.

Boston Globe Columnist Alex Bream writes in this column that when a zealous advocate declares that there is no one to talk to with a legitimate contrary position, Bream's jounalistic instincts signal to him that the zealous advocate knows someone or something about which he does not want the reporter to learn. In this case, Bream writes, one such "someone" is Richard Linzen.

Richard Linzen is the Albert Sloan Professor of Meteorology at an illegitimate, unscientific, irreputable, probably unaccredited school called the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, usually abbrieviated as MIT. He has described Al Gore's movie on global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth," as "shrill alarmism." According to Dr. Linzen, global warming is real, and he acknowledges that increased carbon emissions might be causing the warming -- but they also might not.

``We do not understand the natural internal variability of climate change" is one of Lindzen's many heresies, along with such zingers as ``the Arctic was as warm or warmer in 1940," ``the evidence so far suggests that the Greenland ice sheet is actually growing on average," and ``Alpine glaciers have been retreating since the early 19th century, and were advancing for several centuries before that. Since about 1970, many of the glaciers have stopped retreating and some are now advancing again. And, frankly, we don't know why."

Hat tip to Instapundit.