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The Cleveland Examiner | March 17, 2009 | Paul Fuhr

Posted on Thursday, April 09, 2009 5:41:39 PM by 2ndDivisionVet

“59” might be the magic number for Americans to start thinking twice about global warming fears.

59 scientists around the world have officially added their names to the much-publicized U.S. Senate Minority Report that denounces claims about man-made global warming. This pushes the tally of skeptical scientists to well over 700.

According to a new report, the 700-plus scientists are “now more than 13 times the number of U.N. scientists who authored the media-hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.” Many of the scientists are “affiliated with prestigious institutions” including NASA, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Defense Department, Princeton University, as well as countless others.

Skeptical scientific voices are enjoying more and more company in past weeks, especially in light of a recent article published in The Australian that says Japanese scientists are largely rejecting man-made global warming claims. Japanese Geologist Dr. Shigenori Maruyama, professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said this month that “there was widespread skepticism among his colleagues about the IPCC's fourth and latest assessment report that most of the observed global temperature increase since the mid-20th century 'is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.'"

According to a report published by the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Maruyama noted that when this question was raised at a Japan Geoscience Union symposium last year, "the result showed 90 percent of the participants do not believe the IPCC report.” The same report notes:

Botanist Dr. David Bellamy, a famed UK environmental campaigner, former lecturer at Durham University, and host of a popular UK TV series on wildlife, says the international promotion of man-made global warming fears are nearing their end. “The ­science has, quite simply, gone awry. In fact, it’s not even science any more, it’s anti-science,” says Bellamy, who used to believe in man-made warming.

Perhaps Princeton physicist Dr. Robert H. Austen, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, said it best earlier this month: “Unfortunately, Climate Science has become Political Science … It is tragic that some perhaps well-meaning but politically-motivated scientists who should know better have whipped up a global frenzy about a phenomena which is statistically questionable at best.”

Increasingly, the number of scientists skeptical of global warming seem to be responding to both doomsday predictions of climate change as well as peer-reviewed analyses that downplay claims that man-made global warming is a reality. Just a few weeks ago, Dr. Anastasios Tsonis of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee remarked in Geophysical Research Letters that while Earth undergoes natural climate changes: “I don’t think we can say much about what the humans are doing.” In almost every way, his appropriately ambiguous thoughts seem to best underscore the current war between skeptics and alarmists.

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