Al Gore is a politician who somehow managed to win a Nobel Peace Prize. Ivar Giaever is a Nobel Laureate in Physics. When it comes to global warming one has said, “If we allow this to happen, it would be deeply and unforgivably immoral. It would condemn coming generations to a catastrophically diminished future.” The other asserted, “I am a skeptic. … Global warming has become a new religion.”

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who said what here, although one of these guys is much closer to being a rocket scientist while the other merely pretends to be one. More importantly, Ivar Giaever is only one of 650 dissenting scientists who are taking their case to the United Nations global warming conference in Poznan, Poland.

The Senate Minority Report, to be released later today,

“has added about 250 scientists (and growing) in 2008 to the over 400 scientists who spoke out in 2007. The over 650 dissenting scientists are more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.”

The growing skepticism is only one of many reasons why the United States shouldn’t agree to any global carbon reduction treaty. The fact that cutting greenhouse gas emissions would be extremely costly and would insignificantly affect global temperatures are pretty convincing reasons, too. The Congressional Budget Office reports that a mere 15 percent cut in emissions would increase the annual average household’s energy costs by $1,300. And Obama wants to cut emissions by 80 percent? Yikes.

Also frightening is the stranglehold global warming alarmists and environmental activists have on the political message. George Mason economist Walter Williams says,

“The average individual American has little or no clout with Congress and can be safely ignored. But it’s a different story with groups such as Environmental Defense Fund, Sierra Club and The Nature Conservancy. When they speak, Congress listens. Unlike the average American, they are well organized, loaded with cash and well positioned to be a disobedient congressman’s worse nightmare. Their political and economic success has been a near disaster for our nation.”

Some of the quotes released from the skeptic scientists in the Senate Minority Report are very telling. Former NASA official, atmospheric scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson declared,

“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical.”

Paleontologist Dr. Eduardo Tonni, of the Committee for Scientific Research in Buenos Aires emphasized,

“The [global warming] scaremongering has its justification in the fact that it is something that generates funds.”

2008 has turned out to be a year of global cooling and much of the doomsday talk has dissolved. It’s vitally important to understand the science before we embark on a plan that would mean doomsday for our economy. Heritage energy expert Ben Lieberman sums it perfectly,

“[F]ear is two-edged sword. It can be used to whip up support for action over the near term, but it is hard to sustain for long, especially if it is not well supported by fact. Eventually it could lead to a backlash. Indeed, the global-warming doomsayers may well prove to be their own worst enemy, with their credibility taking a tumble along with the prospects for cap-and-trade legislation.”