A letter to the editor in today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution in response to two op-eds in that paper: “Global Warming: No urgent danger; no quick fix,” by Patrick J. Michaels and “Global warming: Don’t take skeptics at face value,” by John Sibley.

Read more on AJC Letter to the Editor…

I am not a prophet, not even a futurist. I do study trends, now and then, and I try to pay careful attention to popular culture. One thing I am quite sure about: global warming will be a central issue in public debates and political campaigns for some time to come. It has become the Apocalypse Now issue of our generation. (Overpopulation, the nuclear threat and global cooling did it only a few decades ago.) The simple premise, virtually unchallenged in many places, is that we are all destroying the planet. If we do not stop it now we are doomed to wreak havoc everywhere and kill millions of animals and people. Only calloused, cold-hearted, paleo-cons would be willing to battle such "hard" scientific facts and not support all moral efforts to save the earth.

Just last week Newsweek, generally a fairly moderate news source, had a cover story that provided a first-class object lesson about this debate. The story reduced the battle to one between the "good guys" and the "bad guys" and you can easily guess who is who without even reading the story. With righteous indignation (Is there any other kind in this debate?) Newsweek argued that there is a well-funded, anti-scientific "denial machine" at work in America that is determined to stop all serious attempts to solve this crisis. This machine is driven by money from oil companies and by loony-tunes conservatives who are driven by the almighty dollar.  (Don’t look now but many profit-driven companies are getting on the global warming bandwagon because they read the signs of the times and intend to make a good profit by the scare itself! Check out Archer Daniel Midlands and look at their future plans for development sometime.)

In a great op-ed in this week’s edition of Newsweek (August 22) Robert J. Samuelson noted that "Newsweek‘s cover story on global warming was a wonderful read, but misrepresented a very complicated and intractable problem." Well, hooray for Newsweek for including this excellent rebuttal piece. That is more than I can say for many publications on the left or the right. Makes me want to keep getting the magazine really.

Samuelson demonstrates the complications in this debate by showing that there really is no cabal driving this issue at all. Newsweek, he shows plainly, has treated this story very sympathetically since way back in 1988, with numerous cover stories over the years speaking about "the dangers" and why we all should be "worried" about the planet. In 1989 a Gallup Poll found that 63% of Americans worried "a great deal or a fair amount" about global warming while in 2007 the number rose to 65%. (I am surprised it is not a lot higher actually.) Read more on The Global Warming Debate: Yada, Yada, Yada…

Remember the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia and Sri Lanka? I distinctly remember people making jokes about how they’d find a way to blame the whole catastrophe on global warming. Note to self: climate change hype is beyond parody:

Read more on Global Warming Consensus Alert: Flaming, Earth-Crushing Death!…

Dr. Jay Richards made an appearance on the Steve Deace show yesterday on central Iowa’s 50,000 watt blowtorch of a radio station, WHO in Des Moines. The topic of conversation was climate change, and you can listen to the interview by clicking right here (3.2 mb mp3 file).

Read more on Acton Media Update…

Over at the Becker-Posner blog, the gentlemen consider the question, “Do National Security and Environmental Energy Policies Conflict?” (a topic also discussed here.)

Becker predicts, “Driven by environmental and security concerns, more extensive government intervention in the supply and demand for energy are to be expected during the next few years in all economically important countries. Policies that meet both these concerns are feasible, and clearly would have greater political support than the many approaches that advance one of these goals at the expense of the other.”

Read more on National Security and Energy Policy…

Here’s an interesting report from the Media Research Center’s Business & Media Institute on the cyclical nature of media coverage on the issue of climate change. We all know about the global cooling craze of the 1970′s, but who knew that the issue goes back more than a century?

Read more on Everything Old is New Again…

In a recent CT column, David P. Gushee, Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy at Union University, writes, “I am becoming convinced that creation care and what we evangelicals usually call “stewardship” are basically the same thing.” That’s precisely why Acton prefers the term “environmental stewardship” to “creation care.”

Read more on Connecting ‘Creation Care’ and Economics…

On today’s Diane Rehm Show, a panel of experts discussed the pending energy policy legislation in the US Congress. Karen Wayland, legislative director of the Natural Resources Defense Counsel talked about the need to join the concepts of national security and climate change when discussing energy policy (RealAudio).

Read more on National Security and Global Warming…

It’s time again for another action-packed edition of Global Warming Consensus Watch, wherein we highlight the unshakable, unbreakable scientific consensus that Global Warming is a dire threat to our existence and humans are entirely to blame. Long Live the Consensus! In this roundup: WE DON’T NEED NO STINKIN’ PROOF!; AL GORE DON’T NEED NO STINKIN’ MEDIA COVERAGE; just how accurate are those predictions, anyway?; a whole bunch more scientists off the reservation; Kyoto – not all it’s cracked up to be; and Live Earth vs. the British Power Grid. Read more on Global Warming Consensus Watch, Vol. IV…

In what might be the coolest thing ever to happen to me, a Grand Rapids-based “progressive” news outlet has implied that I – as the creative dynamo behind the beloved and highly anticipated Global Warming Consensus Watch posts – am little more than a corporate stooge of Exxon. Yes, the good folks at Media Mouse are pointing the righteous finger of progressive accusation at yours truly for the unimaginable crime of “…running a regular blog feature dedicated to challenging the idea that there is scientific consensus on global warming. These recent activities fit within a history of advocating industry-friendly ‘free-market’ policies and attacking environmental regulations.” Acton also stands accused of giving a forum to an individual with nonstandard and non-”progressive” opinions on both the subject of Global Warming and Corporate Social Responsibility, Mr. Fred Smith. Thoughtcrime, my friends! Thoughtcrime!

Naturally, there must be a reason that we at Acton are so willing to engage in this sort of dangerous expression of subversive views, and Media Mouse has found the smoking gun: a $50,000 contribution to Acton – for general operations – from the Exxon Foundation! Yes, that must be it! That must explain why I, while browsing news on the internet, regularly notice articles published by independent news sources in which the “scientific consensus on global warming” is called into question by 1) scientists or 2) new scientific findings. (Presumably, the media outlets that publish these articles – which include Reuters, The Rocky Mountain News, The International Herald Tribune, The Huntsville Times, and The Financial Times among many others – must also be under the thumb of Exxon, as they’re the ones who actually publish the news articles that I have the audacity to notice.)

So I guess it’s settled: I am little more than a whore for Exxon. Each morning, I receive my talking points from corporate HQ, and every Friday I head down to my local Exxon station to pick up my bag of filthy oil money, a portion of which I use to light cigars that I then extinguish on the backs of the various downtrodden and oppressed wage slaves that I have acquired through my support of “free markets” to do menial labor on my palatial estate while I crank out another issue of Global Warming Consensus Watch.

Or perhaps I simply believe that the science isn’t as settled on this issue as groups like Media Mouse claim, and enjoy presenting a contrary view. Perhaps I didn’t know (and frankly couldn’t care less now that I do know) that Acton does, or ever has received support from Exxon.

Naaah, that couldn’t be it. It must be that we’re all corrupt. So I thought I’d do everyone a favor by just getting it out in the open once and for all.

I am an enemy of the people.

By the way, climate change is normal. And pay no attention to the massive disparity in the amount spent by Exxon in grants to organizations that oppose global warming alarmism last year ($2 million) versus the amount paid out to various alarmist organizations ($100-$150 million). And certainly don’t read this article, which notes that the “gotcha!” funding game can cut both ways. OOH! There I go again with the filthy dirty LIES!

More lies after the jump. Read more on Global Warming Consensus Alert: GWCW IS A TOOL OF EXXON…