A scene from Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth. Gore is one of the most well-known champions for the environment, but data quietly corrected by NASA has started a heated global warming debate.

Why are the voices of thousands of scientists being silenced by a few hundred ideologues? Is the ideology of communism and that of climate change identical? Before we pass any more legislation designed to cripple ourselves economically for generations to come, we had better start asking ourselves a few important questions. Why has the world-wide media glommed onto the notion that global warming is primarily man-made? Has environmentalism become a quasi-religion? Is the U.N. using global warming as a way to gain power over governments and citizens of the world? Why isn’t the other side of the debate ever discussed in polite company? Why are we afraid to entertain the possibility that we might just be all wrong about global warming? Ann Marie Banfield explains in simple terms why environmental extremism is leading to inflated prices.

Global warming seems to be a significant issue in politics and our everyday lives lately. Politicians are now campaigning on this issue and regulating companies due to the assumption that carbon emissions are a contributing factor.

Our politicians decided no offshore drilling for various reasons, including their dogma of CO2 emissions. Of course, we are now all paying the price for this legislation at the gas pump.

What's missing from this debate is the fact that these politicians aren't scientists and this agenda is driven by environmental extremism. Extremism in any form can be detrimental to society.

There is no scientific proof that man is helping or causing global warming. However, that doesn't stop them from passing legislation, which causes us to pay inflated prices, based on pure speculation. Politicians are not scientists but speculators risking our tax dollars and future.

But have you ever heard of the Global Warming Petition Project? If not, ask yourself “Why not?” The Global Warming Petition Project is a rejection of the global warming agreement that was written in Koyoto, Japan in December, 1997. It has been signed by 31,072 American scientists – 9,021 with Ph.D’s! A letter by Professor Frederick Seitz has been circulated with the petition. "Physicist Frederick Seitz was President of the US National Academy of Sciences and of Rockefeller University. He received the National Medal of Science, the Compton Award, the Franklin Medal, and numerous other awards, including honorary doctorates from 32 Universities around the world." Here’s an excerpt from his letter:

. . .The treaty is, in our opinion, based on flawed ideas. Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful. . .”

The purpose of the Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of “settled science” and an overwhelming “consensus” in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climatological damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled science exists. As indicated by the petition text and signatory list, a very large number of American scientists reject this hypothesis. . .

These scientists are instead convinced that the human-caused global warming hypothesis is without scientific validity and that government action on the basis of this hypothesis would unnecessarily and counterproductively damage both human prosperity and the natural environment of the Earth.

According to the George C. Marshall Institute, the debate about the extent of human contribution to global warming is far from being settled.

For about a decade, there has been an ongoing debate about the contribution of human activities to the global warming of the past century and how they may contribute to warming that may occur during the 21st century. Too often this debate has been contentious. International efforts to reach agreement on inferences about human influence on the climate system that can be drawn from science and policy prescriptions for addressing the climate change risk have been controversial as well.

. . .Many of the temperature data and computer models used to predict climate change are themselves uncertain. Reducing these many uncertainties requires a significant shift in the way climate change research is carried out in the U.S. and elsewhere. . .

Last week the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, gave a scathing address against global warming before the Mont Pelerin Society in Tokyo. Here are a few excerpts from an interview with Klaus by Susan Easton in Human Events.

. . .The Tokyo meeting gave President Klaus an opportunity to introduce his new book, "Blue Planet in Green Shackles." The book’s subtitle -- What is Endangered: Climate or Freedom? -- reveals Klaus’s concern about the totalitarian agenda of environmentalists. He sees no difference between the ideology of communism and that of climate change. He says he is no longer simply concerned about the consequences of politicians using global warming to gain and wield power over ordinary citizens. Klaus describes himself now as “angry.” He agrees with author Michael Crichton. “The greatest challenge facing mankind is distinguishing between reality and fantasy, truth from propaganda” as regards global warming.

After he delivered his talk before the MPS, President Klaus sat down for a private interview with HUMAN EVENTS. The man whom Al Gore refused to debate in public when the Czech President challenged him had much to say.

. . .“I am frustrated by the fact that many people, including some leading politicians who privately express similar views to my own, are publicly silent,” Klaus began. He believes the global warming issue “is not being debated in a rational way, but is being thrust into the public consciousness as one-sided propaganda.” He invokes the term “silent majority” to describe rationally thinking people who do not speak out against global warming propagandists.

Klaus believes that the goal of climate change alarmists is nothing less than a continuation of the socialist model of the centralization of economic control. . .

Here is the text of the address President Vaclav Klaus gave last week -- in Tokyo