The Crumbling Climate Consensus

Canada's National Post reports on the climate apostacy of Claude Allegre, one of France's leading socialists and among her most celebrated scientists.

Noting that a number of observable phenomena (including the fact that Antarctica is gaining, not losing, ice) do not fit into the global warming scenario, and that there are plausible alternative explanations for many that do, Dr. Allegre has declared:

"The cause of this climate change is unknown," he states matter of factly. There is no basis for saying, as most do, that the "science is settled."
....

Calling the arguments of those who see catastrophe in climate change "simplistic and obscuring the true dangers," Dr. Allegre especially despairs at "the greenhouse-gas fanatics whose proclamations consist in denouncing man's role on the climate without doing anything about it except organizing conferences and preparing protocols that become dead letters."

Note to Al Gore: This guy is a real heavyweight who should be listened to.

Dr. Allegre's skepticism is noteworthy in several respects. For one, he is an exalted member of France's political establishment, a friend of former Socialist president Lionel Jospin, and, from 1997 to 2000, his minister of education, research and technology, charged with improving the quality of government research through closer co-operation with France's educational institutions. For another, Dr. Allegre has the highest environmental credentials. The author of early environmental books, he fought successful battles to protect the ozone layer from CFCs and public health from lead pollution. His break with scientific dogma over global warming came at a personal cost: Colleagues in both the governmental and environmental spheres were aghast that he could publicly question the science behind climate change.

But Dr. Allegre had allegiances to more than his socialist and environmental colleagues. He is, above all, a scientist of the first order....

The problem with hysterics like the Gorians is not only that they are buying into poorly supported catastrophe scenarios and are asserting a false consensus, they are also proposing drastic solutions that would seriously impede economic growth. Dr. Allegre will have none of that.

His dream, he says, is to see "ecology become the engine of economic development and not an artificial obstacle that creates fear."

An eminently reasonable position articulated by an eminent climatologist. It will never fly in today's absurdly hyperbolic political culture.

Read the article here.