Climategate

[C4Casey]

Wow, if I said I wasn't suprised by this I'd be lying. I knew politicians have been abusing data concerning global warming for years, but I didn't think that many of the actual scientists who support the theory were being dishonest.

Lawmakers Probe Climate Emails - WSJ.com

Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’? – Telegraph Blogs

.: U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works :: Minority Page :.

EDITORIAL: Hiding evidence of global cooling - Washington Times

[Scrum]

Now this is a "gate"?

[thatguyoverthere]

The more you know...

Hacked climate e-mails awkward, not game changer | Green Business | Reuters

Hacked climate e-mails awkward, not game changer
By Timothy Gardner - Analysis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Revelation of a series of embarrassing e-mails by climate scientists provides fodder for critics, but experts believe the issue will not hurt the U.S. climate bill's chance for passage or efforts to forge a global climate change deal.

Already dubbed "Climategate," e-mails stolen from a British university are sparking outrage from climate change skeptics who say they show that the scientists were colluding on suppressing data on how humans affect climate change.

The e-mails, some written as long as 13 years ago, ranged from nasty comments by global warming researchers about climate skeptics to exchanges between researchers on how to present data in charts to make global warming look convincing.

In one e-mail, according to news accounts, Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, wrote: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't."

Climate skeptics seized on the release of the e-mails as a game changer. The documents will speed the end of "global warming alarmism," said Myron Ebell, a climate change skeptic at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He said research that has been relied upon for official reports "is now very suspect."

Patrick Michaels, one of the scientists derided in the e-mails for doubting global warming, said he thinks the documents will finally "open up the scientific debate."

"That's probably the good news," said Michaels, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

But others say the damage may be limited as the evidence is still overwhelming that a buildup of greenhouse gases is melting snow on mountain tops and shrinking global ice caps.

"The issue of scientists behaving badly does nothing to invalidate the science," said Kevin Book, an analyst at ClearView Energy Partners, LLC in Washington. "This does nothing to the U.S. climate bill, which will be decided mostly by economic forces, not environmental ones."

MEAT TO THE WOLVES

Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Project on Climate Change, said the release of the e-mails will be remembered mostly as embarrassment to the researchers.

"It shows that the process of science is not always pristine," said Leiserowitz. "But there's no smoking gun in the e-mails from what I've seen."

Leiserowitz, who is a social scientist, said the e-mails would provide fodder for the 2 to 3 percent of the general public that are hard-core climate change doubters. "For that small group it is like meat to the wolves."

At U.N. climate talks set for next month in Copenhagen, the top producers of greenhouse gases are expected to reach political agreements on tackling climate change, but not agree on hard targets for taking action.

The e-mails may serve as good gossip in the halls at the meeting, but will not play a big role otherwise, experts said.

For one thing, the researchers involved were only a handful out of thousands across the world that have contributed to a vast convergence of data that shows the world has warmed.

"Whilst some of the e-mails show scientists to be all too human, nothing I have read makes me doubt the veracity of the peer review process or the general warming trend in the global temperature recorded," said Piers Forster, an environment professor at the University of Leeds.

Analyst Book doesn't see it changing the debate in the U.S. Congress where with few exceptions lawmakers have moved past the issue of whether mankind was warming the planet.

Lawmakers reached that conclusion even before the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued an assessment by thousands of scientists around the world that concluded in 2007 that warming was real and more than 90 percent certain that it was caused by man-made gases.

Book said "there are many reasons why the climate bill could choke, but it won't be about a group of e-mails."

He said the climate bill supporters are pushing it as a jobs bill that could provide employment in nuclear and other clean energy industries. The lawmakers will succeed or fail in passing the bill based on how well they sell those benefits to the public, he added.

[thatguyoverthere]

Interesting.

C4 Casey, one of your links says that 160 megabytes had been stolen.

EDITORIAL: Hiding evidence of global cooling - Washington Times

It was announced Thursday afternoon that computer hackers had obtained 160 megabytes of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in England.

Yet, it seems that roughly 62 megabytes has been posted by the hackers.

Hacked E-Mails Fuel Global Warming Debate | Threat Level | Wired.com

The hacker then posted a link to the 61-MB file of data on the blog Air Vent.

Climate Change Scandal Erupts After Email Hack. - dslreports.com

Bloggers say the 62 mb worth of emails were hacked from the Climate Research Unit, part of Britain’s University of East Anglia and released onto the Internet. The file containing the emails were packaged and posted on blogs by an anonymous hacker.

Two questions for anyone believing "climategate" is significant:

1. Since the hackers seem to have released less than half of the information they had stolen, isn't there a legitimate possibility that the hackers are cherry picking only the information they want distributed, and therefore reason to be skeptical of these hackers?

2. Doesn't it say anything about the strength of the deniers argument when the only supporting evidence for their position has to be stolen?

[thatguyoverthere]

Originally Posted by Scrum

Now this is a "gate"?

Actually, it's a pretty good move on the ACC deniers part in regards to their position. Hacking these emails and documents is an excellent way of confusing the issue in the minds of non-scientists. Most people aren't going to bother to investigate further and be skeptical of the skeptics. Hey, if a Washington Times editorial and a politician like Inhofe says it, who needs the opinion of real scientists? It seems that deniers would rather rely on editorials and politicians anyway.

Putting it another way: Who would you rather trust, the final official conclusions of every single solitary science academy on the face of the Earth, or someone who steals email and documents then selectively cherry picks what stolen information to release?

I'd be curious for the freedom loving conservatives and libertarians here to explain why stolen information is more trustworthy, and that scientists don't have a right not to be robbed, and scientific organizations should not have the freedom to issue their own official conclusions and have those conclusions carry more weight than stolen, cherry-picked information that is intentionally taken out of context by non-scientists.

It seems the deniers are making their choice to believe thieves rather than groups like the oldest scientific organization in the world or the scientific organization that went to the moon.

That's the deniers choice, but I think it's kinda silly and I am of the opinion that believing anonymous thieves over the carefully considered and officially issued conclusions of every major scientific and academic organization on the planet does more to demonstrate the essential weakness of the deniers position than anything else.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Originally Posted by C4Casey

Wow, if I said I wasn't suprised by this I'd be lying. I knew politicians have been abusing data concerning global warming for years, but I didn't think that many of the actual scientists who support the theory were being dishonest.

No data was actually "abused". Get your facts straight. As for the CRU researchers involved in the e-mails, sure they may be unethical jerks. But none of these issues with the graph are new. If you have even remotely been following the issues, you'd know that. What the deniers don't want you to know is that other researchers independently verified the same trends in the reconstruction as the one in question (Mann's et al. "trick"). This has no bearing on the reality of global warming or validity of any research done. There may have to be an ethics probe by the Met Office into CRU at UEA (I don't know if any actual regulations were violated), but this has nothing to do with independent research organziations, such as NASA, the NOAA or the Hadley Centre, all of which agree about global warming.

I'm getting a little perplexed why we can't keep the global warming debate in one place, so we don't have to keep responding to the same issues in different threads. Here's just a few recent ones:

More evidence of Global Warming
Climate Research Institute Hacked...
Greenland ice loss behind a sixth of sea-level rise
Statisticians reject global cooling
Warming's impacts sped up, worsened since Kyoto
Changing the name makes it all better....

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Originally Posted by thatguyoverthere

Hey, if a Washington Times editorial and a politician like Inhofe says it, who needs the opinion of real scientists? It seems that deniers would rather rely on editorials and politicians anyway.

Inhofe always has radical reactions.

http://www.csicop.org/specialarticle...ll_over_again/

Originally Posted by csicop.org

Déjà vu All Over Again

Doubt and About
Chris Mooney
September 13, 2004

This is how it begins: Proponents of a fringe or non-mainstream scientific viewpoint seek added credibility. They're sick of being taunted for having few (if any) peer reviewed publications in their favor. Fed up, they decide to do something about it.

These “skeptics” find what they consider to be a weak point in the mainstream theory and critique it. Not by conducting original research; they simply review previous work. Then they find a little-known, not particularly influential journal where an editor sympathetic to their viewpoint hangs his hat.

They get their paper through the peer review process and into print. They publicize the hell out of it. Activists get excited by the study, which has considerable political implications.

Before long, mainstream scientists catch on to what’s happening. They shake their heads. Some slam the article and the journal that published it, questioning the review process and the editor’s ideological leanings. In published critiques, they tear the paper to scientific shreds.

Embarrassed, the journal’s publisher backs away from the work. But it’s too late for that. The press has gotten involved, and though the work in question has been discredited in the world of science, partisans who favor its conclusions for ideological reasons will champion it for years to come.

The scientific waters are muddied. The damage is done.

This basic story-line describes not one, but two high profile incidents in the past two years. One concerns climate science, the other evolutionary biology. Both are highly politicized fields, and in each case, the incentive to get something into print is considerable for those who want to carry on their political and scientific fight against the accepted, mainstream view.

Take the climate science storyline first. The most definitive account of what happened appeared in a Chronicle of Higher Education article by Richard Monastersky; the New York Times and Wall Street Journal also covered the story.

In early 2003, the small journal Climate Research published a paper by climate change “skeptics” Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, which challenged the established view that the late twentieth century saw anomalously high temperatures. The paper didn’t present original research; instead, it was a literature review.

Soon and Baliunas examined a wide range of “proxy records” for past temperatures, based on studies of ice cores, corals, tree rings, and other sources. They concluded that few of the records showed anything particularly unusual about twentieth century temperatures, especially when compared with the so-called “Medieval Warm Period” a thousand years ago.

Soon and Baliunas had specifically sent their paper to one Chris de Freitas at Climate Research, an editor known for opposing curbs on carbon dioxide emissions. He in turn sent the paper out for review and then accepted it for publication. That’s when the controversy began.

Conservative politicians in the U.S., who oppose forced restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions, lionized the study. Oklahoma Republican Senator James Inhofe called it literally paradigm shifting. The Bush administration attempted to edit an Environmental Protection Agency report’s discussion of climate change in order to include reference to the Soon and Baliunas work. None of this should come as a surprise: The paper seemed to undermine a key piece of evidence suggesting that we can actually see and measure the consequences of human-induced climate change.

Soon mainstream climate scientists fought back. Thirteen authored a devastating critique of the work in the American Geophysical Union publication Eos. After seeing the critique, Climate Research editor-in-chief Hans von Storch decided he had to make changes in the journal’s editorial process. But when journal colleagues refused to go along, von Storch announced his resignation.

Several other Climate Research editors subsequently resigned over the Soon and Baliunas paper. Even journal publisher Otto Kinne eventually admitted that the paper suffered from serious flaws, basically agreeing with its critics. But by that point in time, Inhofe had already devoted a Senate hearing to trumpeting the new study. However dubious, it made a massive splash.

Now shift to Intelligent Design. The story is newer, and far from over. But already it’s looking like Climate Research parte deux, down to the coverage by the Chronicle of Higher Education's Richard Monastersky.

Recently, ID advocate Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute published a review article in a little known taxonomic journal called the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (that’s D.C.). Focusing on the well-known “Cambrian Explosion,” Meyer argued that evolutionary theory could not account for the appearance of new organismal forms in a relatively short period of geological time. Instead, Meyer concluded by suggesting that “intelligent,” “rational” agents may have been responsible for the “origin of new biological information.” It was the first time the intelligent design movement has published in a peer reviewed biology journal.

Meyer had sent his article to an editor, Richard Sternberg, who sits on the editorial board of the Baraminology Study Group, which studies “creation biology” and is based at Bryan College, a fundamentalist Christian school in Tennessee named (fittingly enough) after anti-Darwin crusader William Jennings Bryan. Sternberg—who is reportedly no longer editor of the Proceedings—sent the paper out to three unnamed reviewers and claims they recommended publication.

Now comes the controversy. The pro-ID Discovery Institute has trumpeted the study, media coverage has begun, and evolution defenders predict ID advocates will use the study to try to get critiques of evolution into public schools by claiming they're based on published science.

Not surprisingly, mainstream scientists are fighting back. Several have authored a devastating critique of Meyer’s paper on the blog The Panda’s Thumb and are preparing a more thorough version, presumably for publication. The critique charges that Meyer’s article systematically ignores relevant scientific literature and contains serious “errors in facts and reasoning.” The Biological Society of Washington, meanwhile, has already issued a statement noting that the article represented a “significant departure from the nearly purely taxonomic content for which this journal has been known throughout its 124-year history” and was “inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings.”

But once again, the damage has been done. The Discovery Institute defends Meyer’s work and will undoubtedly continue to do so. In response to the statement from the Biological Society of Washington, Discovery has accused the group of imposing a “gag rule on science” (never mind that Meyer’s article was beyond the scope and traditional subject matter of the Proceedings). Meanwhile, evolution defenders claim the article in question wasn’t even particularly original to begin with.

The political battle over this highly questionable paper will continue for some time.

What conclusions can we draw from these two case studies in the publication of dubious science by peer reviewed journals?

The first is that we shouldn’t exaggerate the benefits of peer review or pretend it’s an absolute guarantor of scientific truth. On the contrary, the forms, methods, and merits of peer review vary widely both by journal and by standards of practice. Peer review is an important norm in science, and groups who make scientific claims without publishing in the peer reviewed literature should be regarded skeptically on the grounds that they're not actually engaging in the scientific process. But that doesn't mean successfully publishing a single peer reviewed article in a little known journal ensures scientific credibility.

Another conclusion is that in scientific debates with intense political and policy relevance, we shouldn’t be surprised that both camps want to claim that the evidence lies on their side. In order to do so, scientists on the fringe will inevitably seek to bolster their credibility through peer reviewed publications. Obscure journals working in controversial areas should therefore enforce rigorous quality standards, while remaining careful not to censor new ideas or limit legitimate scientific debate. They should take the stories of Climate Research and the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington as a serious warning. These journals have now had their reputations dragged through the mud.

Finally, politicians and policymakers need to decrease the incentives for science abuse by showing that they're unwilling to aid and abet it. So long as the James Inhofes of the world devote entire Senate hearings to single, controversial scientific papers, and announce that they shift the scientific paradigm, we will have Climate Research and Proceedings-type controversies. Instead of contested studies hot off the presses, politicians should generally restrict themselves to relying upon the conclusions of major scientific consensus documents, such as reports from the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences. In the long run, it would save them considerable embarrassment.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Originally Posted by Schrödinger's Cat

Inhofe always has radical reactions.

Here's a good video by Potholer54, who was an Australian journalist for 20 years (science correspondent for 14 years). I highly recommend his videos on climate change (though he has more on other subjects). In this particular video, you have a clip where Sen. Inhofe goes on Fox News to perpetuate a misinformation campaign.

YouTube - 3 - Climate Change -- Anatomy of a myth

Further Inhofe lunacy is documented on Wikipedia:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

In a 2006 interview with the Tulsa World newspaper, Inhofe said regarding the environmentalist movement, "It kind of reminds... I could use the Third Reich, the Big Lie... You say something over and over and over and over again, and people will believe it, and that's their [the environmentalists'] strategy... A hot summer has nothing to do with global warming. Let's keep in mind it was just three weeks ago that people were saying, 'Wait a minute; it is unusually cool...." He then said, "Everything on which they [the environmentalists] based their story, in terms of the facts, has been refuted scientifically."[18] Inhofe had previously compared the United States Environmental Protection Agency to the Gestapo[19] and he compared EPA Administrator Carol Browner to Tokyo Rose.[20] He had also made allegations that the Weather Channel is behind the alleged global warming hoax, so as to attract viewers.[21][22] Inhofe had previously claimed that Global Warming is "the second-largest hoax ever played on the American people, after the separation of church and state."[23]

[JaJae]

Originally Posted by Schrödinger's Cat

No data was actually "abused". Get your facts straight.

Yes it was. Get your facts straight. CRU like other organizations has a history of deleting an purging public data they don't want to be public. This was well known prior to this hack. What these e-mails show is the "culture of corruption" these scientists were engaged in. If deleting and covering up the purging of climate change data isn't abuse I don't know what is. There's good reason CRU was under investigation and had calls for them to disclose their data, and it wasn't because they were an honest organization.

[JaJae]

Also the CRU climate model, unlike the GIS, fails the 95% confidence test which means as scientists it should have been thrown out. The CRU has been a stain in the credibility of climate change science. They are outside the mainstream, their data is more geared towards alarmism and they engage in unethical conduct that is not conducive to proper scientific resource. There is a reason the CRU was targeted in this hack, this is why.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Originally Posted by JaJae

Yes it was. Get your facts straight. CRU like other climate organizations has a history of deleting an purging public data they don't want to be public. This was well known prior to this hack.

Really? Then you wouldn't have a problem showing where the data was purged. If you are talking about Mann, then you should know that his data was handed over. Independent studies were published and confirmed the general findings of Mann's proxy-based reconstructions (as I cited before by the National Research Council, but it was made available elsewhere), and they wouldn't have if he made up his data or altered it. (Edit: Sorry if I misunderstood and you were talking about Jones/Keith. You need to be more specific and cite what you're talking about.) But it is a lot easier to politicize this and focus on discrediting individual scientists than it is to deal with the facts.

What these e-mails show is the "culture of corruption" these scientists were engaged in.

This is a classic ploy. Create a controversy, demonize the scientists without any hard evidence, and then attempt to thereby discredit an entire scientific field.

If deleting and covering up the purging of climate change data isn't abuse I don't know what is.

Do you have any actual evidence that this took place?

There's good reason CRU was under investigation and had calls for them to disclose their data, and it wasn't because they were an honest organization.

The Met Office is under their legal right in the UK to reject requests for data under the UK FOI Act. A person making the request can appeal the decision. Not all research data has to be made public simply because someone wants to see it.

This is simply another diversion tactic by the deniers to draw attention away from the hard, empirical evidence of global warming and the overwhelming consensus of global scientists.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Originally Posted by JaJae

Also the CRU climate model, unlike the GIS, fails the 95% confidence test which means as scientists it should have been thrown out. The CRU has been a stain in the credibility of climate change science.

Which CRU climate model are you talking about, how much confidence was it judged to have, and who made this determination?

They are outside the mainstream, their data is more geared towards alarmism and they engage in unethical conduct that is not conducive to proper scientific resource. There is a reason the CRU was targeted in this hack, this is why.

They were most likely targeted because they refused to release all data (some is/was available on their site) to the public, which is neither illegal nor unethical; the only evidence of criminal activity is that of the hackers. RealClimate.org is correct, what you didn't find is most telling:

There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords.

[Scrum]

Funny how the Republicans didn't think that torture needed to be investigated, but this is something really really important they should look into.

[Stylerod]

Originally Posted by Scrum

Funny how the Republicans didn't think that torture needed to be investigated, but this is something really really important they should look into.

What republican said torture shouldn't be investigated? You throw these kinds of statements out all the time but they are complete lies.

Of course these should be investigated ALSO. I mean, we have Democrats that want to put our complete infrastructure in the hands of a global union which wants us to change the way we produce goods. Democrats want more control of business so Global Warming is a very convenient way to gain more control. If it's found that all these GW theories are skewed because of bad science then we need to find out. But I don't expect much support from Democrats because it defeats their goal of more control of our economy.

[JaJae]

Originally Posted by Stylerod

What republican said torture shouldn't be investigated? You throw these kinds of statements out all the time but they are complete lies.

Of course these should be investigated ALSO. I mean, we have Democrats that want to put our complete infrastructure in the hands of a global union which wants us to change the way we produce goods. Democrats want more control of business so Global Warming is a very convenient way to gain more control. If it's found that all these GW theories are skewed because of bad science then we need to find out. But I don't expect much support from Democrats because it defeats their goal of more control of our economy.

You bring up an interesting point here. Democrats don't care who runs our economy so long as it is not the American consumer. It can be our government, foreign government, etc, so long as the power is taken away from the consumer.

Also the science of climate change has become so politicized, especially in regards to cap and trade. This type of legislation would have incredible impacts on our economy, which makes it a hard sell for the American public. So what we're left with is a lot of people trying exaggerate claims on both sides of the argument. I believe the truth lies in the middle, but most people here seem to believe the truth is closer to the alarmists. I believe this has a lot to do with the public portrayal of the debate.

[Stylerod]

Originally Posted by JaJae

most people here seem to believe the truth is closer to the alarmists. I believe this has a lot to do with the public portrayal of the debate.

I believe it most people here believe the most extreme version of it because they feel government should have more control and free business should have less control.

[Scrum]

Originally Posted by Stylerod

What republican said torture shouldn't be investigated? You throw these kinds of statements out all the time but they are complete lies.

GOP Senators Drop Out of Panel Inquiry Into CIA Program - washingtonpost.com

Republicans on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said Friday that they will no longer participate in an investigation into the Bush administration's interrogation policies, arguing that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s decision to reexamine allegations of detainee abuse by the CIA would hobble any inquiry.

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/04...y4969504.shtml

Arizona Sen. John McCain suggested today that the push to investigate and possibly prosecute Bush administration officials who crafted the legal basis for the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques," such as waterboarding, may have grown from a desire to "settle old political scores."

[...]

Schieffer pointed out that those on the other side of the debate would say that people will not believe America is serious about not using torture again unless those involved are "held accountable."

McCain responded that "they're going to be held accountable in the court of public opinion."

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thega...stigation.aspx

A major Senate probe of the CIA's interrogation and detention practices was seriously derailed Friday when Sen. Kit Bond, the ranking GOP member of the Senate intelligence committee, revealed in a statement that he had pulled the entire GOP staff out of the investigation. Bond blames the move on Attorney General Eric Holder's recent decision to launch a separate criminal inquiry into the agency's abuse of detainees. The move appears to be part of a broader campaign by congressional Republicans and the U.S. intelligence community to pressure Holder to rescind his recent appointment of a special counsel to investigate allegations of torture during the Bush administration.

Loud and wrong as always.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Originally Posted by Stylerod

I believe it most people here believe the most extreme version of it because they feel government should have more control and free business should have less control.

I accept the fact of anthropogenic climate change due to the weight of evidence and a consensus of scientists. Instead of arguing your point based on the science, you are trotting out this red herring. It should be completely irrelevant what a person's economic or political opinions are when it comes to objective facts. If the science is wrong, then argue based on the science. If the science is right, then it doesn't matter which political party or philosophy we consider ourselves. We all share this planet.

As for being "alarmist", if the reality of the situation is a cause for alarm then the only sane reaction is to call attention to it. People called the IPCC "alarmist", but latest observations are even worse than some of their worst-case projections (e.g., arctic ice); this is detailed in the Copenhagen Diagnosis.

[thatguyoverthere]

Originally Posted by Stylerod

I believe it most people here believe the most extreme version of it because they feel government should have more control and free business should have less control.

Stylerod,

Setting aside the people here, do you actually think that the CEO's of over 100 U.S. companies with over $4 trillion in annual revenues, more than 10 million employees, comprising nearly a third of the total value of the U.S. stock markets, representing over 40 percent of all corporate income taxes paid and returning over $100 billion in dividends to shareholders and the economy in a single year endorse the idea that we should take steps today to reduce any impact of human economic activity on the environment because they feel government should have more control and free business should have less control?

I find it very difficult to believe that all those companies, Rupert Murdoch, the Republican party, and NASDAQ itself all think that free business should have less control. I'm surprised that you (and apparently some other folks here) believe it.

[JaJae]

Originally Posted by thatguyoverthere

Stylerod,

Setting aside the people here, do you actually think that the CEO's of over 100 U.S. companies with over $4 trillion in annual revenues, more than 10 million employees, comprising nearly a third of the total value of the U.S. stock markets, representing over 40 percent of all corporate income taxes paid and returning over $100 billion in dividends to shareholders and the economy in a single year endorse the idea that we should take steps today to reduce any impact of human economic activity on the environment because they feel government should have more control and free business should have less control?

I find it very difficult to believe that all those companies, Rupert Murdoch, the Republican party, and NASDAQ itself all think that free business should have less control. I'm surprised that you (and apparently some other folks here) believe it.

Are you trying to imply that the corporate industry of the United States supports climate change legislation such as cap and trade?