EDITORIAL 8A Dec. 10, 2009 The County Paper, Est. 1923 levyjoumalonline.com The Levy County Journal All the president's climategate deniers By Michelle Malkin Creators Syndicate The science is settled, we've been told for decades by zealous proponents of manmade global warming hysteria. Thanks to an earth-shaking hacking scandal across the pond, we now have mountains of documents from the world's leading global warming advocacy center that show the science is about as settled as a southeast Asian tsunami. You won't be surprised by the Obama administration's response to Climategate. With pursed lips and closed eyes and ears, the White House is clinging to the old eco-mantra: The science is settled. Never mind all the devastating new information about data manipulation, intimidation and " cult-like coverups to "hide the decline" in global temperatures over the last half-century, they say. The science is settled. Never mind what The Atlantic's Clive Crook, after wading through the climate science e-mail files of the U.K.'s Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, called the overpowering "stink of intellectual corruption" -- combined with mafia-like suppression of dissent, suppression of evidence and methods, and "plain statistical incompetence" exposed by the document trove. The science is settled. Never mind the expedient disappearance of mounds of raw weather station data that dissenting scientists were seeking through freedom of information requests from the Climatic Research Unit. The science is settled. In March, President Obama made a grandiose show of putting "science" above "politics" when lifting the ban on.government-funded human embryonic,stem cell research. "Promoting science isn't just about providing resources -- it's about protecting free and open inquiry," he said during the signing ceremony. "It's about letting scientists like those who are here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it's inconvenient -- especially when it's inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda -- and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology." Yet, the pro-sound science president has surrounded himself with radical Climategate deniers . who have spent their entire professional careers "settling" manmade global warming disaster science through fear mongering, intimidation and ridicule of opponents. , - Science czar John Holdren, who will testify on Capitol Hill this week at a hearing on Climategate, infamously hyped weather catastrophes and demographic disasters in the 1970s with his population control . ' freak pals Paul and Anne Ehrlich. He made a public bet against free- market economist Julian Simon, predicting dire shortages of five natural resources as a result of feared overconsumption. He lost on all counts. No matter. Holdren's failure didn't stop him from writing forcefully about mass sterilization and forced abortion "solutions" to a fizzling, sizzling, overpopulated planet. And it didn't stop him from earning a living making more dire predictions. In 1986, Ehrlich credited Holdren with forecasting that "carbon-dioxide climate-induced famines could kill as many as a billion people before the year 2020." He went on to Harvard and the White House. On the "Late Show with David Letterman" earlier this year, Holdren fretted that his son "might not see snow!" Canada Free Press (CFP) columnist and Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball notes that Holdren turned up in the Climategate files belittling the work of astrophysicists Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences Division. Holdren put "Harvard" in sneer quotes when mocking. a research paper Baliunas and Soon published in 2003 showing that "the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium." First, deny. Next, deride. -- Energy Secretary Steven Chu picked derision as his weapon earlier this year when peddling the Obama administration's greenhouse-gas emission policy. "The American public ... just like your teenage kids, aren't acting in a way that they should act," The Wall Street Journal quoted Chu. He dismissed dissent by asserting that "there's very little debate" about the impact of "green energy" policy on the economy. There's "very little debate," of course, because dissenters get crushed. -- The Obama team's chief eco-dissent crusher is climate czar Carol Browner. She oversaw the destruction of Environmental Protection Agency computer files in brazen violation of a federal judge's . order during the Clinton years requiring the agency to preserve its records. Over the past year, the EPA has stifled the dissent of Alan Carlin, a senior research analyst at the agency who questioned the administration's reliance on outdated research on the health effects of greenhouse gases. Recently, they sought to yank a YouTube video created by EPA lawyers Allan Zabel and Laurie Williams that is critical of cap-and-trade. Browner reportedly threatened auto execs in July by telling them to "put nothing in writing ... ever" about their negotiations with her. And she is now leading the "science is settled" stonewalling in the wake of Climategate. "I'm sticking' with the 2,500 scientists," she said. "These people have been studying this issue for a very long time and agree this problem is real." Book-cookers are good at making it seem so. In any case, last year, more than 31,000 scientists - - including 9,021 Ph.D.s -- signed a petition sponsored . by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine rejecting claims of human-caused global warming. " But hey, who's counting? The science is settled. Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies" (Regnery 2009). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com. COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS.COM Random thoughts By Thomas Sowell Creators Syndicate R andom thoughts on the passing scene: Sometimes we seem ike people on a pleasure boat drifting down the Niagara river, unaware that there are waterfalls up ahead. I don't know what people think is going to happen when a nation that already sponsors international terrorism has nuclear bombs to give to terrorists around the world. Since this is an era when many people are concerned about "fairness" and "social justice," what is your "fair share" of what someone else has worked for? Here is a math problem for you: Assume that the legislation establishing government control of medical care is passed and that it "brings, down the cost of medical care." You pay $500 a ! year less for your medical care, but the new costs put on employers is passed on to consumers, so that you pay $300 a year more for groceries and $200 a year more for gasoline, while the new mandates put on insurance Companies raise your premiums by $300 a year, how much money have you saved? I seldom read fiction-- and I tend to regard autobiographies as fiction. In response to news of President Obama receiving the Nobel Prize for peace, an e-mail from a reader recalled a black classmate's comments upon graduating from high school many years ago. When asked to list the advantages and disadvantages of being black, the black student facetiously listed as an advantage "being praised for infinitesimal accomplishments." Many colleges claim that they develop "leaders." All too often, that means turning out graduates who cannot feel fulfilled unless they are telling other people what to do. There are already too many people like that, and they are a menace to everyone else's freedom. Some people are so busy being clever that they don't have time enough to be wise. No one likes to admit having been played for a fool. So it will probably take a mushroom cloud over some American city before some Obama supporters wake up. Even so, the true believers among the survivors will probably say that this was all George Bush's fault. Stepping beyond your competence can be like stepping off a cliff. Too many people with brilliance and talent within some field do not realize how ignorant-- or, worse yet, misinformed-- they are when talking like philosopher- kings about other things. . ' There has probably never before been as drastic a decline in the quality of vice presidents as there has been when Dick Cheney was replaced by g - = -_ -_ "-^ ^ Joe Biden. Yet the '. New York Times is lionizing Biden as a wise counselor to . President Obama. When you support , the liberal agenda, that makes you brilliant ex-officio in the media, whether or not you are vice ? rI president-- and . whether or not you have even common sense. Government pressures on mortgage lenders to accept less than t'he full amount they are owed may win votes for politicians, since there are far more borrowers than lenders. But how much future lending can be expected when the lenders know that politicians are ready to intervene at any time to prevent them from getting their money back? Some people think that the Obama administration is going to get rid of Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, making him the scapegoat for its economics failures. This would be consistent with the President's acting as if the people under him are not carrying out his policies. But if they get rid of Geithner too early, that will not help if things still do not get better after he is gone and before the 2010 elections. People who are urging us to do things. to win the approval of. other countries seem - to put an excessive value on other country's approval, . as distinguished from.. their respect that we can lose by such " bowing to "world opinion." Do the world champion New .. . York Yankees try to curry favor with teams that are also- rans? Can you name the only .400 hitter who never won a batting title during his whole career? Or a pitcher who stole home? If you are one of the first ten to answer either of these questions, you will receive a free copy of my most recent book, "The Housing Boom and Bust." To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators. - com. Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford. University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www. tsowell.com. COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS. COM