The official voice of Nature introduces its weekly wisdom by saying President Bush's decision not to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants "stands firmly with the employers and polluters who helped to pay for Bush's singularly unimpressive election victory last November."  Isn't it amazing that a journal devoted to science would feel it must begin what should be a scholarly discussion of this science-based issue with such pejorative remarks, the only purpose of which would appear to be to bias the reader against the side of the scientific issue that Nature's editors seem to detest so vehemently?  How sad!  And how sad that they feel they must end their diatribe (what else can we call it?) in much the same way: "Bush has seen fit to capitulate to the coal industry at the first available opportunity."

Perhaps those responsible for the brief essay have stooped to this low level of discourse because of their inability to make a truly scientific case for their cause (yes, it's no longer just an hypothesis, or even a theory; it's a political cause), which surely says volumes about the scientific basis of their position (maybe it's missing because there is none!).  They talk, for example, about the president's "summary rejection of the accumulated scientific evidence that greenhouse-gas emissions are contributing to climate change," but they present not a single morsel of that wonderful evidence for their readers to chew upon.  Why?  Because it likely would leave a bad taste in their mouths, seeing most of it is not real evidence at all but synthetic support in the form of vastly imperfect climate model simulations.  Yet the Nature editors incredulously say science "sits low in the pecking order of influence inside the new Bush administration," when it is totally missing from their own exposition of the matter!

The Nature editorial ends with the statement that "a bigger price will be paid by many others if Bush persists in ignoring what science is telling him," as if the entity they call "science" spoke with a singular clarion voice of truth and virtue (and emanated from the editorial pages of Nature!).  Of course, in the end, it does just that (the first of these things, that is), but one must have ears to hear it; for there are many who say "Here am I, listen to me, I have the truth," and in the din of clamoring and confusing voices the still small sound of truth is hard to hear, making it easy for one to embrace an enticing counterfeit - as, for example, a sophisticated climate-model simulation - and thereby reject the real thing, which may be oh so very different.

What happened to our father twenty years ago, and then again ten years later, seems now to be occurring on a vastly larger scale.  People who dance to the tune of a different environmental drummer than the ones employed by the climate alarmist establishment are said to be "trouble" and to have "problems."  Even presidents are not immune to this age-old form of character assassination, as evidenced by the recent Science and Nature editorials.  Truly, we are seeing science by the scientific method replaced by the concept of "science by decree," as our father so aptly described it in his initial book on the subject of CO2 and global change (Idso, 1982).  And the sight is not pretty.

So what shall we do?  Boycott corporations that disagree with what we believe to be the truth, like certain politicians and greens are advocating the public should do to companies that think like us?  Give the editors of Science and Nature one week to recant the remarks they made in their unscientific editorials, like Greenpeace gave top U.S. firms one week to oppose the Bush administration's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol?  No.  Science doesn't operate that way.  Science does not use force to make people accept its findings.  Science prevails on the strength of truth alone.  And if all the world rise up against it, what is that to truth?  Will the combined voices of every green group on the face of the earth change the ways the laws of nature function?  Of course not.  But they may fool a lot of people.  Therefore, those of sound mind and good data must speak out and see to it that the message of real-world scientific observations, such as those we have archived under nearly every letter of the alphabet in our Subject Index, is spread to every nook and cranny of the globe.

Truly, the truth shines brightly; but people must be able to see it in order to recognize it.  And when they finally do, we can all say goodbye to the IPCC's more-than-mischievous myths that currently masquerade as scientific fact.  Each of you has a part to play in this endeavor.  Play well your part!

Reference
Idso, S.B.  1982.  Carbon Dioxide: Friend or Foe?  IBR Press, Tempe, AZ, USA, p. 85-88.