The editorial “Obama misleads cadets on climate change” should have been entitled “Tom Harris misleads on climate change.” It’s his job. Canadian Harris and Australian Bryan Leyland, who co-wrote this editorial, are paid by fossil fuel corporations to deny real climate science (“DeSmog Blog,” one of TIME’s Top Ten Blogs). Neither Harris nor Leyland are scientists, much less a climate scientists; they’re both engineers who have become professional climate-change deniers,
The money is good. A few months ago “Willie” Soon was in the news when he got caught secretly taking over a million dollars from oil corporations for his climate science denial services and lying about it. The head of NASA’s Goddard’s Space Center said Soon’s scientific work is “irrelevant.” In other words, it’s pseudoscience. (Harris and Soon have co-written “editorials” together.)
You can see all of Harris’ and Leyland’s claims about climate change disproven by peer-reviewed literature on the award-winning Skeptical Science website, run by volunteer climate scientists– real ones, the kind who publish their work in peer-reviewed science journals.
Like Soon, Harris and Leyland and get their money from the Heartland Institute, which, it turn, gets its funding from fossil fuel corporations.(The DeSmog Blog). As for Harris’ impressive-sounding International Climate Science Coalition, there’s nothing scientific about it. Like Heartland, it’s merely another front for the fossil fuel industry’s clandestine multimillion dollar climate denial operation (Scientific American online: “Dark Money” and “How to Win Friends and Bamboozle People About Climate Change.”).
Harris used to work with the tobacco industry back-in-the-day when they were denying that smoking causes lung cancer, using fake “doctors”. Big Tobacco’s favorite front: Heartland.
Same scam, different industry, so now it’s fake “scientists” (DeSmog Blog).
You can find out more about Harris by Googling “Tom Harris Carleton University.” Also search “Tom Harris” on the Skeptical Science website. And if you look at this newspaper’s online version, Harris briefly appears on the comments section below the editorial. You’ll see how quickly he disappears when readers confront him with peer-reviewed scientific literature which contradicts his false claims.
Every scientific body of national or international standing says global warming is manmade and an increasing existential threat: The National Academy of Sciences, NASA, NOAA, The American Association for the Advancement of Science (Google “What We Know”), The National Science Foundation, and over 200 others. Every climate scientist publishing in peer-reviewed science journals worldwide agrees (10,855 climate science papers published on the past 2 years).
And those cadets Obama addressed? The Pentagon’s position papers clearly show it sees climate change as a serious national security threat.
If you already know that climate change is a real threat, and want to do something it, see the volunteer Citizens Climate Lobby website. They’ve got a realistic plan to address the problem without government spending or regulations, just free-market forces, and it will be good for our economy.
Pete Kuntz resides in Lancaster, Pa.
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