Global balminess.(CORRECTION, PLEASE!)(Correction Notice)

ITEM: The president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, Kevin Knobloch, complained that the U.S. "set back progress on global warming" at the G-8 summit in July. In a statement published in the Kansas City (Mo.) infoZine on July 9, Knobloch claimed: "In the face of growing and compelling scientific evidence that global warming is advancing ... President Bush 's ability to block concrete action on global warming at the G8 Summit is irresponsible. In Scotland, President Bush resembled an isolated soul in a global warming tug of war, stubbornly being dragged modestly closer to the line where all of the other major worm governments and an increasing number of the world's corporations are already standing."

ITEM: The headline of a USA Today article on June 12 tried to slam the door on the issue: "The debate's over: Globe is warming."

ITEM: The Denver Post for July 4 reported: "The evidence of human-caused global warming becomes more clear every day, and with it the need for governments to take effective action.... Based on fresh research, there's no longer any real doubt that by burning fossil fuels, humans are changing Earth's climate."

CORRECTION: Saying something three times, or 333 times, doesn't make it so. Propagandists repeatedly insist that the "debate" about global warming is over, that humans have dramatically changed the Earth's weather and need to make radical amends, and that there is a scientific consensus about all such "facts." But the propagandists are wrong, and in the "global warming tug of war" there is no reason for George W. Bush to allow himself to be "dragged modestly closer to" the alarmist position.

Yet the president is moving in the alarmist direction, albeit not as fast as environmental doomsayers would like. Indeed, the Bush White House is boasting that the U.S. "is investing more than any other nation for climate change programs." Since 2001, brags the White House "Fact Sheet," the administration "has spent over $20 billion on climate change activities, and proposes $5.5 billion more for 2006." And the president himself even said at a news conference in Denmark on his way to the G-8 summit. "I recognize that the surface of the Earth is warmer and that an increase in greenhouse gases caused by humans is contributing to the problem."

Supposedly the Bush administration is being forced to catch up to the scientific consensus, but contrary to the media-created perception, there is no consensus. Last April, Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, informed his colleagues that a 2001 National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report, cited by global warming alarmists as evidence of scientific consensus, does no such thing. Inhofe noted: "Dr. Richard Lindzen, a professor of meteorology at MIT, and a member of the NAS panel that produced the report, expressed his amazement" about the misrepresentation ...