Jump-starting global-warming hysteria.(Inside Track)(Brief article)

A confluence of events during the last week of January guarantees that fears over global warming will again make climate change a hot political issue. On January 30, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Democrat Henry Waxman (Calif.), convened hearings on whether or not the Bush administration pressured scientists to remain silent on global-warming fears.

The hearing was used to showcase the report Atmospheric Pressure, by the left-leaning Union of Concerned Scientists. That report laments, contrary to reason, "that inappropriate political interference [from the Bush administration] and media favoritism are compromising federal climate science." In fact, the Bush administration has long accepted global warming as fact, and media reports are invariably skewed in favor of the most sensationalistic of global-warming scare scenarios. Only a partisan from the very distant ...