Waves of lies.(Correction, Please!)

ITEM: A January 13 Reuters news service story reported: "Damage done by Asia's tsunami gives a clearer idea of the danger climate change poses to small islands, which fear rising seas will submerge them as the world warms, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said [today]." Reuters quoted Annan as saying: "It is no longer so hard to imagine what might happen from the rising sea levels that the world's top scientists are telling us will accompany global warming."

ITEM: The Voice of America News on January 3 cited a "global warming expert" who indicated that the tsunami revealed a vulnerability to rising sea levels caused by global warming: "A professor at the University of California says the tsunami that struck Asia and Africa highlights how many people live along the world's coastlines. What's more, she says, it highlights the need to take action on global warming, which could affect sea levels."

VOA interviewed Naomi Oreskes, an associate professor of history and director of the program in science studies at the University of California. "Many reports have been issued stating Global Warming is a reality, but often a government official says more study is needed," VOA stated. Oreskes added: "Many people have gotten the impression that we really do need more study--that it really is a kind of contested scientific issue. And that's just not true. The science of this problem is not at issue."

CORRECTION: There is a growing, unsettling predisposition among environmental extremists with polemical axes to grind to blame mankind in general and industrial development in particular for natural disasters. This penchant, so frequently displayed by global-warming alarmists, reached new depths in the wake of the South Asian disaster. Professor Oreskes, cited above, is representative of many who tried to link the tsunami to man-made climatic changes.

She also made the same absurd argument that there is a scientific consensus about global warming in Science magazine in December--in an essay that purportedly analyzed 928 abstracts from scientific journals during the last decade containing the keywords "climate change." Not even one, she said, determined that climate change was occurring naturally. Case ...