U. S. Senate Minority Report: - Klimaforschung

changes, and we get a so called surface inversion which inhibits convection,” Thuene
explained. (LINK)
Chemist and Nuclear Engineer Robert DeFayette was formerly with NASA’s Plum
Brook Reactor in Ohio and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) at its
headquarters office near Washington, DC. DeFayette, who earned a masters degree in
Physical Chemistry, also worked at the NRC’s Regional Office near Chicago where he
was a Director of the Enforcement staff. He also served as a consultant to the
Department of Energy. DeFayette wrote a critique of former Vice President Al Gore's
book, An Inconvenient Truth, in 2007. “I freely admit I am a skeptic,” DeFayette told EPW
on January 15, 2008. “I take umbrage in so-called ‘experts’ using data without checking
their sources. My scientific background taught me to question things that do not appear to
be right (e.g.-if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is). That is one reason I went to
such detail in critiquing Gore's book. I also strongly object to the IPCC and its use of socalled
‘experts,’” DeFayette explained. In his March 14, 2007 critique of Gore, DeFayette
dismissed Gore’s claim that “the survival of our civilization” is at stake. DeFayette wrote,
“Nonsense! Civilization may one day cease to exist but it won’t be from global warming
caused by CO2. I can think of many more promising scenarios such as disease, nuclear
war; volcanic eruptions; ice ages; meteor impacts; solar heating.” DeFayette asserted that
Gore’s book was “a political, not scientific, book. There is absolutely no discussion about
the world’s climate history, effects of the sun, other planets, precession, eccentricity, etc.”
DeFayette disputed Gore’s notion of a “consensus.” “Until a few months ago, scientists
believed we had 9 planets, but now we have 8 because Pluto was demoted. In the 1600s
scientists believed we lived in an earth-centered universe but Galileo disagreed and proved
we lived in a sun-centered universe. At the time of Columbus, the scientific consensus was
that the earth was flat but obviously that was wrong. In the late 18th century, ‘Neptunists’
were convinced that all of the rocks of the Earth’s crust had been precipitated from water
and Robert Jameson, a British geologist, characterized the supporting evidence as
‘incontrovertible,’” DeFayette wrote. “In each of these cases there was ‘scientific
consensus’ that eventually was rejected,” he added.
Award-winning Paleontologist Dr. Eduardo Tonni, the principal investigator for the
Committee for Scientific Research of the province of Buenos Aires (CIC) and head of
the Paleontology Department at the University of La Plata, dissented from the global
warming “consensus” in 2007. "There is no denying a warming; the discussion is whether
it was created by man or whether it is natural. There are effects of human action, but it is
much more likely to be a natural product,” Tonni said, according to a December 2, 2007
article in the Argentine publication Perfil.com. [translated] "Many of us think so (warming
is natural), but of course, this is not politically correct. I know that I am saying this and I
am without [industry] subsidies," Tonni said in the article titled “A Group of Argentine
Scientists Skeptical of Climate Change.” Tonni, who received the “Merit Award” in 2003
by the Argentina Paleontologist Association, also dismissed the linkage of natural disasters
to man-made climate change. "There are countless historical records of disasters, but it is
very difficult to estimate if the frequency is greater. Perhaps we are more informed. The El
Niño event is known only from some 30 years ago,” Tonni said. "The scaremongering has
its justification in the fact that it is something that generates funds. If you say that global
change is produced by natural effects, we would sit and see what happens. Thus, we have
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