Global Warming: First, Get the Facts

Before overhauling the economic system and imposing Draconian restrictions on nearly every aspect of life, it's advisable to get the facts straight.

That's why at the end of August the U.S. Chamber of Commerce demanded that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency hold a full hearing on arguments for — and against — the theory that manmade global warming poses catastrophic consequences. If the government refuses, we support the Chamber's plans to seek a court trial and judicial determination of whether warming even is continuing and whether or not it's a threat.

All the evidence must be weighed before committing government and the citizenry to massive economic costs and mandatory lifestyle changes.

Despite alarmists' claims to the contrary, the science is far from settled. If anything, it's hugely in dispute.

The EPA is headed toward a formal declaration that heat-trapping gases pose a danger and therefore should be regulated under the Clean Air Act. That would open the door for regulation of virtually every commercial and many private activities. Such new rules decreed from a regulatory agency come about much differently than new laws proposed in Congress, where there's sunshine and debate.

"They don't have the science to support the endangerment finding," flatly states Bill Kovacs, vice president for environmental, regulatory and government affairs for the chamber, representing 3 million U.S.

Global warming alarmists contend that rising temperatures from manmade carbon emissions will lead to drought, rising sea levels, intense storms and widespread ecological harm. The alarming predictions are based almost entirely on unproven computer climate models. The feared devastation is conspicuously absent in real life.

Growing numbers of scientists, including many who participated in the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that endorsed the dire forecasts, have come out as skeptics on global warming theory and with good reason.

They point to inconvenient realities such as no significant warming since 1995, and indeed global cooling for several years despite increasing greenhouse gas emissions. An ever-growing number of peer-reviewed studies and a mounting chorus within the scientific community now oppose alarmists' claims. We say, let's hear the debate, see the evidence and may truth prevail.

REPRINTED FROM THE JACKSONVILLE DAILY NEWS.

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