KINDER'S COMMENTARY: GROWING NUMBER OF SCIENTISTS CALL GLOBAL WARMING A HOAX

The coming month will see the convening, in Kyoto, Japan, of a bunch of United Nations types all agog about the alleged danger of something they call global warming. We are fortunate that U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Cape Girardeau, will be among 15 designated members of Congress in attendance as observers on our behalf.

What is afoot is a neo-socialist, global agenda pushed by don't-confuse-us-with-the-facts extremists who are quite comfortable with handing off American sovereignty to the U.N. It is also about raising your taxes, and raising them big. If the truth gets out in time, we can stop this power grab by environmental extremists and inflict on them defeats of such magnitude that no politician will forget it for a long time.

About 20 years ago, as I was moving from college to law school, North America suffered through two back-to-back, very cold winters. The same people now sounding the alarm about global warming tried to tell us, after a couple of tough winters, that we were on the verge of a new Ice Age.

Remember the Gulf War? Remember the burning oil wells in Kuwait and Iraq ignited by retreating Iraqi troops? The late scientist Carl Sagan was among those global warming types who then warned us that these burning oil wells could cause "global climate change." Does anyone ever hold these panic mongers to account?

Now comes the redoubtable Dr. Fred Singer, and in this fine man it appears the global warmers have met their match. Singer, holder of a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University, has led a distinguished and varied career in career in both the private sector and in academia, including 23 years as professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, one of America's most distinguished institutions of higher learning.

Singer, like a growing number of scientific experts, flatly says the hysteria over global warming is a hoax. "Contrary to what warming proponents say, there is no global warming," Singer says. "And contrary to what they say, there is no scientific consensus, either." Atmospheric data collected from weather satellites and balloon instruments show no warming whatsoever; in fact, the data reveal a slight cooling trend in recent years.

Dr. Singer says that on the outcome of such debates hinges nothing less than a possible "dire fate of economic suicide" for the United States and other industrial nations. Why so dire? What is really at stake here? Singer explains the anti-growth agenda of these panic mongers: "The underlying effort here seems to be to use global warming as an excuse to cut down the use of energy. It's very simple: If you cut back the use of energy, then you cut economic growth. And believe it or not, there are people in the world who believe we have gone too far in economic growth."

Such people would include a few biology professors at a certain local university who basically hate American capitalism and want us to revert to the shrunken economy of, say, 50 or 60 years ago. These are the cowards who use their classrooms to trash critics, and never display the honesty or simple decency to invite a critic to address those captive audiences.

Judging from letters to the editor, it would appear a growing number of our readers are on to the scam. Perhaps it is time for a public debate on the university campus in which these tax-paid indoctrinators can be confronted, publicly. Tape it, put it on TV, and let the public decide whom to believe, and whom to laugh off the stage.

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.