The Alchemist's Prize

Global warming skeptics always claim to have a gaggle of credible scientists ready, willing and able to refute the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's conclusions about man-made global warming and the climate change dangers that lie ahead.

Here's the truth - they're full of crap.

First you have to leave out the "usual suspects", the scientists who gravitated to the service of Big Oil after years of lining their pockets fighting the good fight for Big Tobacco by spreading doubt about the link between cigarettes and cancer. Sorry, those people are paid liars and about as reliable as jailhouse informants.

Then, take whatever dregs are left over and come up with any credible studies they have produced that disprove the IPCC findings. The catchword here is "credible" as in "peer-reviewed". All that means is that they have published the hard research behind their conclusions so that it can be tested by other scientists and shown to be valid or bogus. That's not too much to ask, is it? We ask that of the scientists whose research, thousands of pages of it, is used by the IPCC in its work.

Now, don't be giving us the old saw about how these skeptic scientists can't come up with the funding that the pampered global warming people enjoy. Think about how stupid that sounds.

Can even you hardened skeptics believe, even for a minute, that Big Oil and Big Coal wouldn't heap immeasurable money onto any scientist able to refute the IPCC and show that global warming isn't a man-made problem arising out of greenhouse gas emissions? No one has a more immediate and direct financial interest in this than the fossil fuel industry and, if you've read any of the reports about their latest quarterly earnings, these companies are literally awash in profits lately.

Big Oil and Big Coal would pay anything to the alchemist who could allow them to get the global warming and climate change and greenhouse gas emissions problems off their backs. The only thing is that coming up with any credible rebuttal is as hard as turning lead into gold.