Than 1000 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global ...

public fear as shamelessly as any other political statement that hopes to unite the public
behind a particular ideology." Giegengack, who holds both a master's degree and a
doctorate in geology, explained that the Earth has been warming for about 20,000 years,
and humans have only been collecting data for about 200 years. "For most of Earth's
history, the globe has been warmer than it has been for the last 200 years. It has only rarely
been cooler," Giegengack said, noting that the colder periods included ice piled up two
miles thick on what is now North America. According to the magazine, "Giegengack tells
his students they might want to consider that ‗natural' climatic temperature cycles control
carbon dioxide levels, not the other way around. That's the crux of his argument with
Gore's view of global warming - he says carbon dioxide doesn't control global temperature,
and certainly not in a direct, linear way." "Sea level is rising," Giegengack said. The article
continued: "But, he explains, it's been rising ever since warming set in 18,000 years ago.
The rate of rise has been pretty slow - only about 400 feet so far. And recently - meaning in
the thousands of years - the rate has slowed even more. The Earth's global ocean level is
only going up 1.8 millimeters per year. That's less than the thickness of one nickel. For the
catastrophe of flooded cities and millions of refugees that Gore envisions, sea levels would
have to rise about 20 feet." Giegengack explains: "At the present rate of sea-level rise it's
going to take 3,500 years to get up there [to Gore's predicted rise of 20 feet]. So if for
some reason this warming process that melts ice is cutting loose and accelerating, sea level
doesn't know it. And sea level, we think, is the best indicator of global warming." Finally,
Giegengack concludes by rejecting the notion that we need to "save" the Earth. "There's all
this stuff about saving the planet. The Earth is fine. The Earth was fine before we got here,
and it'll be fine long after we're gone." Giegengack's University of Pennsylvania
colleague, Geologist Dr. Ed Doheny (formerly of Drexel University) also critiqued
former Vice President Al Gore's climate science presentation. "[Gore's] got his independent
and dependent variables all mixed up," Doheny said according to an October 18, 2007
article in The Daily Pennsylvanian. Doheny also mocked Gore by stating, "I didn't know
they gave the Nobel Prize for acting." (LINK)
AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Joe Bastardi questioned whether mankind was
driving recent warming or whether it was "the pulsing of the sun" in an April 10, 2007 blog
titled, "Does the Sun Have the Smoking Gun?" "People are concerned that 50 years from
now it will be warm beyond a point of no return. My concern is almost opposite, that it's
cold and getting colder," Bastardi, who specializes in long-range forecasts, wrote. "You
see, the warmer it gets, the tougher it is to get warmer. There will always be a certain set
point in a system and unless the amounts of water and land changes, it will try to get back
to that set point. The oscillations of water temperatures can distort feedback from the Earth
as I believe we are seeing now, and the dance between the tropics and non tropical areas as
far as the weather goes is something that one can see in the [19]30s through the [19]50s,
but at least to me disappears in the [19]60s through the [19]80s, or when the Pacific is in its
warmer cycle, the Atlantic cooler," Bastardi wrote. He rejected the idea that the C02
climate connection was the only acceptable view in the climate change debate. "One has to
understand that the force feeding of any idea with so many variables in a system is counter
to methods long established to prove or disprove theories," Bastardi explained.
Environmental scientist Dr. David W. Schnare, a senior enforcement counsel at the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency who has managed EPA's Office of Ground-
Water and Drinking Water Economic, Legislative and Policy Analysis Branch,
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