By Tom Harper, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:24am GMT 11/03/2007

Scientists who questioned mankind’s impact on climate change have received death threats and claim to have been shunned by the scientific community.

They say the debate on global warming has been “hijacked” by a powerful alliance of politicians, scientists and environmentalists who have stifled all questioning about the true environmental impact of carbon dioxide emissions.

Timothy Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Canada, has received five deaths threats by email since raising concerns about the degree to which man was affecting climate change.

One of the emails warned that, if he continued to speak out, he would not live to see further global warming.

“Western governments have pumped billions of dollars into careers and institutes and they feel threatened,” said the professor.

I can tolerate being called a sceptic because all scientists should be sceptics, but then they started calling us deniers, with all the connotations of the Holocaust. That is an obscenity. It has got really nasty and personal.

Last week, Professor Ball appeared in The Great Global Warming Swindle, a Channel 4 documentary in which several scientists claimed the theory of man-made global warming had become a “religion”, forcing alternative explanations to be ignored.

Richard Lindzen, the professor of Atmospheric Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology - who also appeared on the documentary - recently claimed: “Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves labelled as industry stooges.

“Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science.”

Dr Myles Allen, from Oxford University, agreed. He said: “The Green movement has hijacked the issue of climate change. It is ludicrous to suggest the only way to deal with the problem is to start micro managing everyone, which is what environmentalists seem to want to do.”

Nigel Calder, a former editor of New Scientist, said: “Governments are trying to achieve unanimity by stifling any scientist who disagrees. Einstein could not have got funding under the present system.”

I don’t know what the facts are, but there is no harm in being sensitive to environmental issues— as long as the big picture of economical health is always kept in mind.

~Jason

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They spoke against God, saying,
  “Can God spread a table in the wilderness?
He struck the rock so that water gushed out
  and streams overflowed.
Can he also give bread
  or provide meat for his people?”

Therefore, when the LORD heard, he was full of wrath;
  a fire was kindled against Jacob;
  his anger rose against Israel,
because they did not believe in God
  and did not trust his saving power.
Yet he commanded the skies above
  and opened the doors of heaven,
and he rained down on them manna to eat
  and gave them the grain of heaven.
Man ate of the bread of the angels;
  he sent them food in abundance.
He caused the east wind to blow in the heavens,
  and by his power he led out the south wind;
he rained meat on them like dust,
  winged birds like the sand of the seas;
he let them fall in the midst of their camp,
  all around their dwellings.
And they ate and were well filled,
  for he gave them what they craved.
But before they had satisfied their craving,
  while the food was still in their mouths,
the anger of God rose against them,
  and he killed the strongest of them
  and laid low the young men of Israel.

The lesson for me today was simple: when I am in my “figurative desert”, do I trust God to provide? Do I pine for the old days of abundance, or cheerfully anticipate how God will supply my needs today?

I choose faith.
~Jason

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