Dissent, Not Denial: Informed Opposition to the Science of Climate Change Is Growing

Beneath the surface of a Cap and Tax debate that has only just begun to rage in this country, a basic premise is largely being taken for granted. Prominent fixtures of the political class, from Al Gore to Newt Gingrich to John McCain, have accepted and declared as fact that the Earth is getting warmer, the icecaps are getting smaller, carbon is to blame, and only government can save the day.

So why are other countries suddenly hitting the brakes on their own carbon-emission-reduction schemes? More importantly, why is Congress ramming a punitive tax hike down the throats of American consumers without an informed debate, even as controversy surrounding the science of the global warming “consensus” grows in countries like New Zealand and Australia?

Last week, the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel made an excellent argument that opponents of Cap and Tax in America should not cede the scientific high ground without a proper fight. Strassel reports that:

The collapse of the “consensus” [in Australia and New Zealand] has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth’s temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.

Apparently Nancy Pelosi missed that memo. On Friday night her Democratic Congress passed the largest tax hike in American history with the vocal support of President Obama. Who, incidentally, has failed to even acknowledge the ongoing scientific controversy and has chosen instead to break his own campaign promise by raising taxes on lower and middle class families.

Substantial Democratic majorities in both houses mean that the Obama administration and Congress can distort science and economics and do pretty much whatever they want when it comes to Cap and Tax. But American liberal lemmings should take a look around and realize that even their friends across the pond are refusing to go over this cliff.